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THE 



LAWS OF FERMENTATION 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 



REV. WILLIAM PATTOE", D.D. 



"Each age of the Church has, as it were, turned over a new leaf in the Bible, 
and found a response to its own wants. We have a leaf to turn — a leaf not the 
less new because it is so simple." — Dean Stanley. 




New York: 

NATIONAL TEMPERANCE SOCIETY AND PUBLICATION HOUSE, 

172 William Street. 

1871. 



■?3 



Entered, accordiBg to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 

J. N. STEARNS, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, in the City of Washington. D. C. 



JOHN BOSS & CO., PRINTERS, 27 ROSE STREET, NEW YORK. 



TO 

EDWABD C. DELAVAN, ESQUIKE, 

THE 

INTREPID AND MUNIFICENT PIONEER; 

TO 

THE HON. WILLIAM A. BUCKINGHAM, 

THE 

STEADFAST AND CONSISTENT ADVOCATE; 

TO 

THE HOK WILLIAM E. DODGE, 

THE 

ENERGETIC AND LIBERAL PRESIDENT ; 

A FAITHFUL TRIO, 

NOBLY BATTLING FOR THE RIGHT, 

IS THIS VOLUME DEDICATED 

BY 

THEIR EARNEST CO-LABORER IN THE GOOD CAUSE OF 

TEMPERANCE, 

WM. PATTOK 

Neio Haven, Conn. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Introduction 7 

History . 9 

The Question ; 13 

Fermentation, Laws of ...... .J" .... 15 

Warm Climate and Sweet Fruits 18 

Palestine a Hot Climate 19 

Sweet is the Natural Taste 22 

Fruits Preserved 23 

Fermentation Prevented— Authorities 24 

Methods used by the Ancients— Boiling or Inspissating, Filtration, Subsi- 
dence, Fumigation 26-39 

Ancients called these Wine 41 

Wines mixed with Water 48 

The Scriptures — Generic Words 53 

Other Hebrew Words 58 

Greek, Latin, and English Generic Words 60 

Classification of Texts— Bad Wine, Good Wine . . 62-72 

The Wine of Egypt 72 

New Wine and Old Bottles 75 

Christ Eating and Drinking 77 

- he Lord' Supper 79 

Texts in Mark and Luke examined 83 

Wedding Wine at Cana 85 

Pentecost Scene, Acts ii. 13 89 

Stumbling-blocks, Rom. xiv. 13 92 

Expediency .... ......... 95 

Temperance 100 

Lord's Supper at Corinth 100 

Various Texts examined 103 

Charge to Timothy, " Not Given to Wine." 106 

Paul's Permission to Timothy to use " A Little Wine " 108 

Charge to Deacons Ill 

Fermented Wine not a Creature of God 112 

Various Texts examined 116 

Testimonies— Professor George Bush, Doctor E. Nott, Professor Moses 

Stuart, and Albert Barnes 122 



The Laws of Fermentation, 



THE WINES OE THE ANCIENTS, 



INTRODUCTION. 



My design is not originality. It is to collect and so to 
arrange the facts and arguments, under their appropriate 
heads, as to facilitate the investigation and to produce the 
clearest and firmest conviction. 

The proofs are stated on the authorities to which they 
are credited, and who are to be held responsible for their 
accuracy. Many, however, of these authorities I have 
verified by my personal examination, and to these I 
have added new ones. 

The use made of the facts, as well as the reasonings 
connected with them, is obviously my own. For the 
exposition of many passages of Scripture I must be held 
responsible. My simple aim is to present this important 
subject in a manner so plain that all readers of the Bible 
may understand what are my convictions of its teachings 
on the subject of temperance, and particularly of the 
wine question. 

It can hardly be expected that the views herein ex- 
pressed will satisfy all. But all will bear me witness that 
my reasonings are conducted in candor, and with due 
respect to those from whom I am constrained to differ. 
Their views are carefully stated in their own chosen Ian- 



8 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

guage, and their quoted authorities are fairly given. 
When their relevancy is questioned or then inferences 
shown to be illogical, no suspicion of motives has been 
allowed. 

Truth gains nothing by asperities ; whilst mere dog- 
matism recoils upon itself. The contemptuous treatment 
of a new interpretation of the sacred text is no proof 
that it is not true. Only the original text is inspired. 
No translation, much less no mere human interpretation, 
is absolute authority. As all wisdom has not died with 
those who have done their work on earth and gone to 
heaven, so there is a possibility that clearer light may 
yet be thrown upon the inspired page which will give a 
more satisfactory understanding of the Word of God. 

Every honest explorer should be hailed as a helper. 
The truth will bear searching after, and when found it 
will liberally reward the most diligent and patient re- 
search. What such desire is to know the truth. It may 
awaken controversy. If it is conducted in the spirit of 
love and with a teachable disposition, it will harm nobody, 
but will certainly bless many. Most things are kept 
bright by rubbing. The controversy will necessitate a 
more careful study of the Bible, a more perfect under- 
standing of the laws of nature as well as the usages of 
the ancients. The truth will thus be developed, and it 
will ultimately triumph. 

The Hebrew and Greek words, for the benefit of the 
general reader, are written in English. Where the 
original is quoted, a translation is also given. 

To facilitate more extended research, and to verify the 
quotations made, the authors and the pages are named. 

A free use has been made of the London edition of 
Dr. Nott's Lectures on Biblical Temperance, printed in 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 9 

1863. This edition was published under the careful re- 
vision of Dr. F. It. Lees, who has added foot-notes and 
five very valuable and critical appendices. It is also ac- 
companied with a scholarly introduction by Professor 
Tayler Lewis, LL.D., of Union College. The publication 
of this volume in this country would subserve the cause 
of temperance. 

The Temperance Bible Commentary, by F. R. Lees and 
D. Burns, published in London, 1868, has been of great 
service to me. I am happy thus publicly to acknowledge 
my indebtedness to it for much judicious and critical in- 
formation. I am happy to learn that it has recently been 
stereotyped in this country, and is for sale by the National 
Temperance Society. A copy ought to be in the hands 
of every temperance man. 

HISTORY. 

My interest in the cause of temperance was awakened 
by the evidence which crowded upon me, as a pastor in 
the city of New York, of the aboundings of intemperance. 
The use of alcoholic drinks was then universal. Liquor 
was sold by the glass at almost every corner. It stood 
on every sideboard, and was urged upon every visitor. 
It was spread upon every table, and abounded at all social 
gatherings. It found a conspicuous place at nearly every 
funeral. It ruled in every workshop. Many merchants 
kept it in their counting-rooms, and offered it to their 
customers Tjfho came from the interior to purchase goods. 
Men in all the learned professions, as well as merchants, 
mechanics, and laborers, fell by this destroyer. These and 
other facts so impressed my mind that I determined to 
make them the subject of a sermon. Accordingly, on the 



10 

Sabbath evening of September 17, 1820, I preached 
on the subject from Romans xii. 2 : "Be not con- 
formed to this world," etc. After a statement of the facts 
which proved the great prevalence of intemperance, I 
branded distilled spirits as a poison because of their effects 
upon the human constitution ; I urged that therefore the 
selling of them should be stopped. The sermon stated 
that, " whilst the drunkard is a guilty person, the retail 
seller is more guilty, the wholesale dealer still more guilty, 
and the distiller who converts the staff of life, the benevo- 
lent gift of God, into the arrows of death, is the most 
guilty." Then followed an appeal to professors of reli- 
gion engaged in the traffic to abandon it. 

These positions were treated with scorn and derision. 
A portion of the retail dealers threatened personal vio- 
lence if I dared again to speak on this subject. 

During the week, a merchant who had found one of his 
clerks in haunts of vice, in a short paragraph in a daily 
paper, exhorted merchants and master-mechanics to look 
into Walnut Street, Corlaer's Hook, if they would know 
where their clerks and apprentices spent Saturday nights. 
This publication determined me, in company with some 
dozen resolute Christian men, to explore that sink of 
iniquity. This we did on Saturday night, September 23, 
1820. We walked that short street for two hours from 
ten to twelve o'clock. On our return to my study, we 
compared notes, and became satisfied of the following facts. 
On one side of Walnut Street, there were thirty houses, 
and each one was a drinking-place with, an open bar. 
There were eleven ball-rooms, in which the music and 
dancing were constant. We counted on one side two 
hundred and ten females, and at the same time on the 
other side eighty- seven, in all, two hundred and ninety- 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 11. 

seven. Their ages varied from fourteen to forty. The 
men far outnumbered the women, being a mixture of 
sailors and landsmen, and of diverse nations. Many of 
them, both men and women, were fearfully drunk, and all 
were more or less under the influence of liquor. We 
were deeply pained at the sight of so many young men, 
evidently clerks or apprentices. The scenes of that night 
made a permanent impression on my mind. They con- 
firmed my purpose to do all in my power to save my fel- 
low-men from the terrific influences of intoxicating drinks. 
I began promptly, and incorporated in a sermon the 
above and other alarming statistics of that exploration, 
which I preached on the evening of Sabbath, Sept. 24, 
1 820, notice having been given of the subject. The text was 
Isa. lviii. 1 : " Cry aloud, and spare not ; lift up thy voice 
like a trumpet," etc. My first topic was the duty of 
ministers fearlessly to cry out against prevailing evils. 
The second topic was the sins of the day, particularly 
Sabbath desecration and drunkenness, with their accesso- 
ries. After a statement of facts and other arguments, my 
appeal was made to the Scriptures, which are decided and 
outspoken against intemperance. The house was crowded 
with very attentive listeners. ~No disturbance took place. 
A fearless, honest expression of sentiments, if made in the 
spirit of love and without exasperating denunciations, 
will so far propitiate an audience as to induce them to hear 
the argument or appeal. 

I soon found that the concession so generally made, 
even by ministers, that the Bible sanctions the use of in- 
toxicating drinks, was the most impregnable citadel into 
which all drinkers, all apologists for drinking, and all 
venders of the article, fled. This compelled me, thus ear- 
ly, to study the Bible patiently and carefully, to know 



12 THE LAWS OP FERMENTATION, AND 

for myself its exact teachings. I collated every passage, 
and found that they would range under three heads : 
1. Where wine was mentioned with nothing to denote its 
character; 2. Where it was spoken of as the cause of 
misery, and as the emblem of punishment and of eternal 
wrath ; 3. Where it was mentioned as a blessing, with 
corn and bread and oil — as the emblem of spiritual mercies 
and of eternal happiness. These results deeply impressed 
me, and forced upon me the question, Must there not have 
been two hinds of wine f So novel to my mind was this 
thought, and finding no confirmation of it in the commen- 
taries to which I had access, I did not feel at liberty to 
give much publicity to it — I held it therefore in abeyance, 
hoping for more light. More than thirty-five years since, 
when revising the study of Hebrew with Professor 
Seixas, an eminent Hebrew teacher, I submitted to him 
the collation of texts which I had made, with the request 
that he would give me his deliberate opinion. He took 
the manuscript, and, a few days after, returned it with the 
statement, "Tour discriminations are just; they denote 
that there were two kinds of wine, and the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures justify this view." Thus fortified, I hesitated no 
longer, but, by sermons and addresses, made known my 
convictions. At that time, I knew not that any other 
person held this view. There may have been others more 
competent to state and defend them. I would have sat 
at their feet with great joy and learned of them. Such 
was not my privilege. From that day to this, though 
strong men and true have combated them, I have never J 
wavered in my convictions. 

The publication some years later of Bacchus and Anti- 
Bacchus greatly cheered and strengthened me. So also did 
the lectures of the Rev. President Nott, with the confirma- 



1 



THE WINES OP THE ANCIENTS. 13 

tory letter of Professor Moses Stuart. From these and 
other works I learned much, as they made me acquainted 
with authorities and proofs which I had not previously 
known. 

THE QUESTION. 

True philosophy is based upon well-ascertained facts. 
As these never change, so the philosophy based upon them 
must be permanent. The laws of nature are facts always 
and everywhere the same. ISTot only are gravitation and 
evaporation the same in all parts of the world, but 
also in all ages. All the laws of nature are as clearly the 
expressions of the divine mind as are the inspired writ- 
ings. God's book of nature, with its wonderful laws, and 
God's book of revelation, with its teachings, must be har- 
monious when they treat of the same things. 

The devout Christian has nothing to fear from the dis- 
coveries of true science. Though for a time they may seem 
to conflict with the teachings of the Bible, still, when more 
perfectly understood, it will be found that science, in all 
its departments, is the true and faithful handmaid of 
revealed religion. 

All the laws which God has established, whether writ- 
ten on the rocks or in the processes of nature, are in exact 
harmony with the inspired records. This will be made 
apparent when the interpretation of the Bible, and the facts 
of science, and the operation of the laws of nature, are 
more thoroughly understood. 

The advocates of only fermented or intoxicating wines 
thus state their positions : " When the word is the same,, 
the thing is the same ; if, therefore, wine means intoxicat- 
ing wine when applied to the case of JSToah and Lot, it 



14 

must have meant the same when used by David in the 
Psalms, and so of its correspondent in the Gospel narrative 
of the changing of water into wine." " As Noah and 
others got drunk with yayin (wine), yayin must in every 
text mean a fermented liquor.'' " The word wine is un- 
deniably applied in the 13ibie to a drink that intoxicated 
men : therefore the word always and necessarily means 
intoxicating liquor." " The juice of the grape when call- 
ed wine was always fermented, and, being fermented, was 
always intoxicating." " Fermentation is of the essence of 
wine." " This word (yayin) denotes intoxicating wine 
in some places of Scripture ; it denotes the same in all 
places of Scripture." " There is but one kind of wine — 
for wine is defined in the dictionaries as the fermented 
juice of the grape only." These statements are clear and 
explicit. But it seems to me that, by a very summary 
and strange logic, they beg the whole question, and shut 
out all discussion. I am not disposed to surrender the 
argument to such sweeping declarations. At present I 
quote a few counter-statements. 

Dr. Ure, in his Dictionary of Arts, says, " Juice when 
newly expressed, and before it has begun to ferment, is 
called must, and in common language new wineP — Bible 
Commentary, xxxvii. Littleton, in his Latin Dictionary 
(16T8), "Mustum vinum cadis recens inclusam. Gleukos, 
oinos neos. Must, new wine, close shut up and not per- 
mitted to work." — Bible Commentary, xxxvi. 

Chambers's Cyclopaedia, sixth edition (1750) : " Sweet 
wine is that which has not yet fermented." — Bible Com- 
mentary, xxxvii. 

Rees' Cyclopaedia : u Sweet wine is that which has not 
yet worked or fermented." 

Dr. Noah Webster : " Wine, the fermented juice of 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 15 

grapes." Must, " Wine, pressed from the grape, but not 
fermented." 

Worcester gives the same definitions as Webster. Both 
these later authorities substantially follow Johnson, 
Walker, and Bailey. 

Professor Charles Anthon, LL.D., in his Dictionary of 
Greek and Roman Antiquities, article Vinum, says, " The 
sweet unfermented juice of the grape was termed gleukos" 

One more authority : it is Dr. Win. Smith's Dictionary 
of the Bible, the most recent one, published and edited in 
this country by Rev. Samuel W. Barnum, of New Haven, 
Conn. Article Wine, page 1189, says, " A certain amount 
of juice exuded from the ripe fruit from its own pressure 
before the treading commenced. This appears to have been 
kept separate from the rest of the juice, and to have formed 
the sweet wine ( Greek, geukos, A. Y. new wine) noticed 
in Acts ii. 13." Again he sa}^s, " The wine was sometimes 
preserved in its unfermented state and drunk as must." 
Again, " Very likely, new wine was preserved in the state 
of must by placing it in jars or bottles, and then burying 
it in the earth." 

These authorities I now use as a sufficient offset to the 
unqualified statements already quoted. They prove that 
there are two sides to this question : Were there among the 
ancients two kinds of wine, the fermented and the unfer- 
mented % 



FERMENTATION. 

The laws of fermentation are fixed facts, operating 
always in the same way, and requiring always and every- 
where the same conditions. 



\<0 

Donavan, in his work on Domestic Economy (in Lard- 
tier's Cyclopaedia), says : 

" 1. There must be saccharine (sugar) matter and 
gluten (yeast). 

"2. The temperature should not be below 50° nor 
above 70° or 75°. 

" 3. The juice must be of a certain consistence. Thick 
syrup will not undergo vinous fermentation. An excess 
of sugar is unfavorable to this process ; and, on the other 
hand, too little sugar, or, which is the same thing, too 
much water, will be deficient in the necessary quantity 
of saccharine matter to produce a liquor that will keep, 
and for want of more spirit the vinous fermentation 
will almost instantly be followed by the acetous. 

" 4. The quantity of gluten or ferment must also be 
well regulated. Too much or too little will impede and 
prevent fermentation." — Anti-Bacchus, j>. 162. Dr. TJre, 
the eminent chemist, fully confirms this statement of 
Professor Donavan. — Anti- Bacchus, p. 225. 

The indispensable conditions for vinous fermentation 
are the exact proportions of sugar, of gluten or yeast, and 
of water, with the temperature of the air ranging between 
50° and 75°. 

Particularly notice that a " thick syrup will not undergo 
vinous fermentation, and that an excess of sugar is unfavor- 
able to this process." But it will undergo the acetous, and 
become sour. This our wives understand. For, when 
their sweetmeats ferment, they do not produce alcohol, but 
become acid, sour. This is not a secondary, but the first 
and only fermentation — by the inevitable law that where 
there is a superabundance of saccharine matter and more 
than 75° of heat, then the vinous fermentation does 
not take place, but the acetous will certainly and imme- 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 17 

diately commence. It may be well to notice just here a 
few items in relation to the production of alcohol. 

Count Chaptal, the eminent French chemist, says, 
" Nature never forms spirituous liquors ; she rots the 
grape upon the branch; but it is art which converts 
the juice into (alcoholic) wine."— Bible Commentary, 
p. 370. 

Professor Turner, in his Chemistry, says of alcohol, 
" It does not exist ready formed in plants, but is a pro- 
duct of the vinous fermentation." — Bible Commentary, 
p. 370. 

Adam Fabroni, an Italian writer, born 1732, says, 
" Grape-juice does not ferment in the grape itself." — 
Bible Commentary, p. xxxix. 

Dr. Pereira {Elements of Materia Medica, p. 1221), 
speaking of the manufacture of wine, says: "Grape- 
juice does not ferment in the grape itself. This is owing 
not (solely) as Fabroni supposed, to the gluten being 
contained in distinct cells to those in which the saccharine 
juice is lodged, but to the exclusion of atmospheric oxygen, 
the contact of which, Gay Lussac has shown, is (first) 
necessary to effect some change in the gluten, whereby 
it is enabled to set up the process of fermentation. The 
expressed juice of the grape, called must (mustum), 
readily undergoes vinous fermentation when subjected to 
the temperature of between 60° and 70° F. It becomes 
thick, Tnuddy, and warm, and evolves carbonic acid gas." 
— Nott, London Ed., F. K. Lees, Appendix B, p. 197. 

Professor Liebig, the eminent chemist, remarks : " It is 
contrary to all sober rules of research to regard the vital 
process of an animal or a plant as the cause of fermentation. 
The opinion that they take any share in the morbid pro- 
cess must be rejected as an hypothesis destitute of all 



18 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

support. In all fungi, analysis has detected the presence 
of sugar, which during their vital process is not resolved 
into alcohol and carbonic acid ; but, after their death, from 
the moment a change in their color and consistency is per- 
ceived, the vinous fermentation sets in. It is the very 
reverse of the vital process to which this effect must, be 
ascribed." "Fermentation, putrefaction, and decay are 
processes of decomposition." — Bible Commentary, xxxix. 

WARM_ CLIMATE AND SWEET FRUITS. 

We all know that a cold season gives us sour straw- 
berries, peaches, etc., and that a hot season produces 
sweeter and higher-flavored fruits. The sugar-cane will 
not yield rich, sweet juice in a cold climate, but matures 
it abundantly in hot countries. Heat is an essential 
element in the production of large quantities of sugar. 
In climates, then, where the temperature at the vintage is 
above 75°, and the saccharine matter preponderates, the 
vinous fermentation, if the juice is in its natural condition, 
cannot proceed, but the acetous must directly commence. 
It is a well-established fact that " the graj^es of Palestine, 
Asia Minor, and Egypt are exceedingly sweet.'' — A.-B. 
p. 203. 

Mandelslo, who lived a.d. 1640, speaking of palm 
wine, says, " To get out the juice, they go up to the top of 
the tree, where they make an incision in the bark, and <j 
fasten under it an earthen pot, which they leave there all 
night, in which time it is filled with a certain sioeet liqyior 
very pleasant to the taste. They get out some also in the 
day-time, but that (owing to the great heat) corrupts 
immediately ; it is good only for vinegar, which is all the 
use they make of it." — Kitto, vol. i. p. 585. Here, true 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 19 

to the law which God has fixed, this juice, so largely 
saccharine in this hot climate, immediately turns sour. 

A Mohammedan traveller, a d. 850, states that " palm 
wine, if drunk fresh, is sweet like honey / but if kept it 
turns to vinegar." — Kitto, vol. i. p. 585. 

Adam Fabroni, already quoted, treating of Jewish hus- 
bandry, informs us that the palm-tree, which particularly 
abounded in the vicinity of Jericho and Engedi, also 
served to make a very sweet wine, which is made all over 
the East, being called palm wine by the Latins, and syra 
in India, from the Persian shir, which means luscious 
liquor or drink." — Kitto, vol. i. p. 588. 

Similar statements are made by Capt. Cook, Dr. Shaw, 
Sir G. T. Temple, and others as quoted by Kitto. 

The Rev. Dr. Mullen, Foreign Secretary of the London 
Missionary Society, and long a missionary in Persia, stated 
at the meeting of the A. B. C. F. M. at Brooklyn, Oct., 1870, 
that the nations draw from the palm-tree the juice, which 
they boil, and of which they also make sugar. 

The Hon. I. S. Diehl, a traveller in Persia and other 
Eastern lands, at a meeting of ministers in New Haven, 
Conn., stated that the inhabitants made good use of the 
juice of the palm-tree, which they collect as above-named, 
which they boil to preserve it ; of it they make sugar, and 
that foreigners have taught them to make an intoxicating 
drink. 

PALESTINE A HOT CLIMATE. 

The blessing which the patriarch Jacob pronounced 
upon Judah contains this remarkable prediction, Gen. 
xlix. 11 : " Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's 
colt unto the choice viue ; he washed his garments in wine, 



20 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

and his clothes in the blood of grapes." Thns the future 
territory of Judah's descendants was to be so prolific of 
strong vines that domestic animals could everywhere be 
hitched to them. The vines were to be so fruitful that 
the garments of the inhabitants could be washed in their 
juices.. God's promise to the Hebrews, Deut. viii. 7, 8, was, 
" For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, 
a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths 
that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, 
and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates ; a 
land of oil olive, and honey." We also read that Pabshakeh 
said to the Jews, 2 Kings xviii. 32, " I come and take you 
away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, 
a land of bread and vineyards, a land of oil olive and of 
honey." These texts settle the fact that Palestine abounded 
in sweet fruits — that the Hebrews cultivated the grape 
and made wine. 

Dr. Jahn, professor of Oriental languages in the Uni- 
versity of Vienna, in his Biblical Archaeology, first pub- 
lished in this country from the Latin abridgment of 1814, 
says : " The Hebrews were diligent in the cultivation of 
vineyards, and the soil of Palestine yielded in great quan- 
tities the best of wine. The mountains of Engedi in par- 
ticular, the valley of the salt-pits, and the valleys of Esh- 
eol and Sorek were celebrated for their grapes." "In 
Palestine, even at the present day, the clusters of the 
vine grow to the weight of twelve pounds ; they have large 
grapes, and cannot be carried far by one man without be- 
ing injured. (Num. xiii. 24, 25.) The grapes are mostly 
red or black ; whence originated the phrase " blood of the 
grapes." (Gen. xxix. 11 ; Deut. xxxii. 14 ; Isa. xxvii. 2.) In 
Num. xiii. 23, we read of " one cluster of grapes from Esh- 
col " borne by two men upon a statf. " Clusters weighing 



THE WINES OP THE ANCIENTS. 21 

from twenty to forty pounds are still seen in various parts 
of Syria." "Nan affirms, p. 458, that he saw in the neigh- 
borhood of Hebron grapes as large as one's thumb." " Dan- 
dini, although an Italian, was astonished at the large size to 
which grapes attained in Lebanon, being, he says (p. 79), as 
large as prunes." " M ariti (iii. 134) affirms that in different 
parts of Syria he had seen grapes of such extraordinary 
size that a bunch of them would be a sufficient burden 
for one man." " Neitchutz states he could say with 
truth that in the mountains of Israel he saw and had eaten 
from bunches of grapes that were half an ell long, and the 
grapes two joints of a linger in length." " A bunch of 
Syrian grapes produced at Welbeck, England, sent from 
the Duke of Portland to the Marquis of Rockingham 
weighed nineteen pounds, its diameter nineteen inches and 
a half, its circumference four feet and a half, its length 
nearly twenty-three inches. It was borne to the Marquis 
on a staff by two laborers." — Bible Commentary, p. 46, 
note. 

Thomas Hartwell Home, in his Introduction to the 
Study of the Bible, vol. iii. p. 28, says of Palestine, 
" The summers are dry and extremely hot." He quotes 
Dr. E. D. Clarke that his thermometer, sheltered from 
the sun, " remained at 100° Fahrenheit." He states " that 
from the beginning of June to the beginning of August, 
the heat of the weather increases, and the nights are " so 
warm that the inhabitants sleep on their house-tops in the 
open air ; that the hot season is from the beginning 
of August to the beginning of October; and that during 
the chief part of this season the heat is intense, though 
less so at Jerusalem than in the plain of Jericho : there is no 
cold, not even in the night, so that travellers pass whole 
nights in the open air without inconvenience. These 



22 THE LAWS OF FEEMEXTATIOX, A^D 

statements are fully confirmed by Bev. J. "W. J^evin." — 
2?z'5fe Antiquities, and other authorities. 

In the summer of 1867, Captain Wilson, of the English 
exploring expedition in Palestine, states " that the ther- 
mometer after sunset stood at 110° Fahrenheit in July at 
Ain, the ancient Engedi." Captain "Warren, of the same 
expedition, " was compelled by the ill-health of his party 
during the summer heat at Jerusalem to retreat to the 
Lebanon range." — Advance, February 3, 1870. 

Chemical science prohibits the vinous fermentation if 
the heat exceeds 75°, and ensures the acetous if above 75°. 
Also, that very sweet juices, having an excess of sugar, are 
unfavorable to vinous fermentation, but are favorable to 
the acetous. The valleys of Eshcol and Sorek were fa- 
mous for their luscious grapes ; but the temperature there 
in the vintage months was 100°. 

SWEET IS THE NATURAL TASTE. 

Sweet is grateful to the new-born infant. It is loved 
by the youth, by the middle-aged, and by the aged. This 
taste never dies. In strict keeping with this, we find that 
the articles, in their great variety, which constitute the 
healthful diet of man, are palatable by reason of their 
sweetness. Even of the flesh of fish and birds and animals 
we say, " How sweet ! " 

Whilst this taste is universal, it is intensified in hot 
climates. It is a well-authenticated fact that the love of 
sweet drinks is a passion among Orientals. For alcohol, 
in all its combinations, the taste is unnatural and wholly 
acquired. To the natural instinct it is universally re- 
pugnant. 

I do therefore most earnestly protest that it is neither 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 2o 

fair, nor honest, nor philosophical, to make the acquired, 
vitiated taste of this alcoholic age, and in cold climates, 
the standard by which to test the taste of the ancients 
who lived in hot countries; and, because we love and 
use alcoholic drinks, therefore conclude that the ancients 
must also have loved and used them, and only them. 

FRUITS PRESERVED. 

As grapes and other fruits were so important a part of 
the food of the ancients, they would, by necessity, invent 
methods for preserving them fresh. Josephus, in his 
Jewish Wars, b. vii. c. viii. s. 4, makes mention of a 
fortress in Palestine called Masada, built by Herod. 
" For here was laid up corn in large quantities, and such 
as would subsist men for a long time : here was also wine 
and oil in abundance, with all kinds of pulse and dates 
heaped up together. These fruits were also fresh and full 
ripe, and no way inferior to such fruits newly laid in, al- 
though they were little short of a hundred years from 
the laying in of these provisions." 

In a foot-note "William "Whiston, the translator, says: 
" Pliny and others confirm this strange paradox, that pro- 
visions thus- laid iro against sieges will continue good an 
hundred years, as Spanheim notes upon this place." 

Swineburn says " that in Spain they also have the se- 
cret of preserving grapes sound and juicy from one sea- 
son to another. — Bible Com?nentary, p. 278. 

Mr. E. C. Delavan states that when he was in Florence, 
Italy, Signor Pippini, one of the largest wine manufac- 
turers, told him " that he had then in his lofts, for the use 
of his table, until the next vintage, a quantity of grapes 
sufficient to make one hundred gallons of wine; that 



24 

grapes could always be had, at any time of the year, to 
make any desirable quantity ; and that there was nothing 
in the way of obtaining the fruit of the vine free from 
fermentation in wine countries at any period. A large 
basket of grapes was sent to my lodgings, which were as 
delicious, and looked as fresh, as if recently taken from 
the vines, though they had been picked for months." — 
Bible Commentary, p. 278. Rev. Dr. H. Duff, in his 
Travels through the South of Europe, most fully con- 
firms this view. — -JSfott, London Ed. p. 57, note. 

FERMENTATION PREVENTED. 

Professor Donavan, in his work on Domestic Economy, 
mentions three methods by which all fermentation could be 
prevented : 

" 1. Grape-juice will not ferment when the air is com- 
pletely excluded. 

" 2. By boiling down the juice, or, in other words, evap- 
orating the water, the substance becomes a syrup, which if 
very thick will no't ferment. 

" 3. If the juice be filtered and deprived of its gluten, or 
ferment, the production of alcohol will be impossible." / 
— Anti-Bacchus, p. 162. \ 

Dr. "Ore, the eminent chemist, says that fermentation 
may be tempered or stopped : 

" 1. By those means which render the yeast inoperative, 
particularly by the oils that contain sulphur, as oil of 
mustard, as also by the sulphurous and sulphuric acids. • 

" 2. By the separation of the yeast, either by the filter oi 
subsidence. 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 25 

"3. By lowering the temperature to 45°. If the ferment- 
ing mass becomes clear at this temperature and be drawn 
off from the subsided yeast, it will not ferment again, 
though it should be heated to the proper pitch."— Anti- 
Bacchus, p. 225. 

Baron Liebig, in his Letters on Chemistry, says: "If a 
flask be filled with grape-juice and made air-tight, and 
then kept for a few hours in boiling water, the wine does 
not now ferment."— Bible Commentary, xxxvii. Here 
we have two of the preventives, viz., the exclusion of the 
air, and the raising of the temperature to the boiling 
j)oint. 

The unalterable laws of nature, which are the laws of 
God, teach these stern facts : 

1. That very sweet juices and thick syrups will not 
undergo the vinous fermentation. 

2. That the direct and inevitable fermentation of the 
sweet juices, in hot climates with the temperature above 
.75°, will be the acetous. 

3. That to secure the vinous fermentation the tempera- 
ture must be between 50° and 75°, and that the exact 
proportions of sugar and gluten and water must be se- 
cured. 

4. That all fermentation may be prevented by excluding 
the i air, by boiling, by filtration, by subsidence, and by the 
usei'of sulphur. 

DID THE ANCIENTS USE METHODS TO PRESERVE THE 

JUICES SWEET? 

I 

j Augustine Calmet, the learned author of the Dictionary 
I f the Bible, born 1672, says : " The ancients possessed the 
' ecret of preserving wines sweet throughout the whole 



26 

year." If they were alcoholic, they "would preserve them- 
selves. The peculiarity was preserving them sweet. Che- 
mistry tells us that the juice loses it sweetness when, by 
fermentation, the sugar is converted into alcohol. Pre- 
serving them sweet throughout the whole year meant 
preserving them unfermented. 

Chemical science instructs us that by reason of the great 
sweetness of the juice and the heat of the climate at the 
vintage, the vinous fermentation would be precluded, and 
that, unless by some method prevented, the acetous would 
certainly and speedily commence. Four modes were 
known and practised by the ancients which modern che- 
mical science confirms. • 



By this process the water is evaporated, thus leaving 
so large a portion of sugar as to prevent fermentation. 

Herman Boerhave, born 1668, in his Elements of Chem- 
istry, says, " By boiling, the juice of the richest grapes 
loses all its aptitude for fermentation, and may afterwards 
be preserved for years without undergoing any further 
change." — JVott, London Edition, p. 81. ft 

Says Liebig, " The property of organic substances > 
pass into a state of decay is annihilated in all cases 1 
heating to the boiling point." The grape-juice boils lon 
212° ; but alcohol evaporates at 170°, which is 42° bei 
the boiling point. So then, if any possible portion 
alcohol was in the juice, this process would expel it. Tre, 
obvious object of boiling the juice was to preserve it sweof 
and fit for use during the year. 

Parkinson, in his Theatrum Botanicum, says: "Thor 
juice or liquor pressed out of the ripe grapes is called 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 27 

vinum (wine). Of it is made both sapa and defrutum,, 
in English cute, that is to say, boiled wine, the latter 
boiled down to the half, the former to the third part." — ■ 
Bible Commentary, xxxvi. This testimony was written 
about a.d. 1640, -centuries before there was any temper- 
ance agitation. 

Archbishop Potter, born a.d. 1674, in his Grecian 
Antiquities, Edinburgh edition, 1813, says, vol. ii. p. 360, 
" The Lacedsemonians used to boil their wines upon the 
fire till the fifth part was consumed ; then after four years 
were expired began to drink them." He refers to Demo- 
critus, a celebrated philosopher, who travelled over the 
greater part of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and who died 
361 b.c, also to Palladius, a Greek physician, as making 
a similar statement. These ancient authorities called the 
boiled juice of the grape wine, and the learned arch- 
bishop brings forward their testimony without the slight- 
est intimation that the boiled, juice was not wine in the 
judgment of the ancients. 

Aristotle, born 384 b.c, says, " The wine of Arcadia 
was so thick that it was necessary to scrape it from the 
skin bottles in which it was contained, and to dissolve the 
scrapings in water." — Bible Commentary, p. 295, and 
iWott, London Edition, p. 80. 

/ Columilla and other writers who were contemporary 
with the apostles inform us that " in Italy and Greece it 
[ was common to boil their wines." — Dr. Nott. 
1 Some of the celebrated Opimian wine mentioned by 
/ Pliny had, in his day, two centuries after its production, 
\ the consistence of honey. Professor Donavan says, " In 
[order to preserve their wines to these ages, the Pomans 
\ concentrated the must or grape-juice, of which they were 
'.made, by evaporation, either spontaneous in the air or 



28 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

over a fire, and so much so as to render them thick and 
syrupy." — Bible Commentary, p. 295. 

Horace, born 65 B.C., says " there is no wine sweeter to 
drink than Lesbian ; that it was like nectar, and more 
resembled ambrosia than wine; that it was perfectly 
harmless, and would not produce intoxication." — AnU- 
Bacchus, p. 220. 

Yirgil, born 70 b.c, in his Georgic, lib. i. line 295, 



" Aut dulcis musti Vulcano decoquit huinorem, 
Et foliis undam tepidi despuinat aheni." 

Thus rendered by Dr. Joseph- Trapp, of Oxford Univer- 
sity: 

" Or of sweet must boils down the luscious juice, 
And skims with leaves the trembling caldron's flood," 

More literally translated thus by Alexander : " Or with 
the fire boils away the moisture of the sweet wine, and 
with leaves scums the surge of the tepid caldron." 

W. O. Brown, who travelled extensively in Africa., 
Egypt, and Syria from a.d. 1792 to 1798, states that "the 
wines of Syria are most of them prepared by boiling 
immediately after they are expressed from the grape, till 
they are considerably reduced in quantity, when they were 
put into jars or large bottles and preserved for use. 
He adds, " There is reason to believe that this mode of 
boiling was a general practice among the ancients." 

Yolney, 1788, in his Travels in Syria, vol. ii. chap. 29, \ 
says : " The wines are of three sorts, the red, the white, 
and the yellow. The white, which are the most rare, are* \ 
so bitter as to be disagreeable ; the two others, on the J 
contrary, are too sweet and sugary. This arises from theh> 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 29 

being boiled, which makes them resemble the baked wines 
of Provence. The general custom of the country is to- 
reduce the must to two-thirds of its quantity." " The 
most esteemed is produced from the hillside of Zonk — it is 
too sugary." " Such are the wines of Lebanon, so boasted 
by Grecian and Roman epicures." " It is probable that 
the inhabitants of Lebanon have made no change in their 
ancient method of making wines." — .Bacchus, p. 374, note. 

Dr. Bowring, in his report on the commerce of Syria, 
praises, as of excellent quality, a wine of Lebanon con- 
sumed in some of the convents of Lebanon, known by the 
name of vino d'or — golden wine. (Is this the yellow wine 
which Yolney says is too sweet and sugary ?) But the 
Doctor adds " that the habit of boiling wine is almost uni- 
versal." — Kitto, ii. 956. 

Caspar ISTeuman, M.D., Professor of Chemistry, Berlin, 
1759, says : " It is observable that when sweet juices are 
boiled down to a thick consistence, they not only do not 
ferment in that state, but are not easily brought into fer- 
mentation when diluted with as much water as they had 
lost in the evaporation, or even with the very individual 
water that exhaled from them." — JVott, Lond. Ed., p. 81. 

Adams' Roman Antiquities, first published in Edin- 
burgh, 1791, on the authority of Pliny and Yirgil, says : 
"'In order to make wine keep, they used to boil (decon- 
quere) the must down to one-half, when it was called 
defrutum, to one-third, sapa." 

■ Smith's Greek and Roman Antiquities : "A consider- 
able quantity of must from the best and oldest vines was 
inspissated by boiling, being then distinguished by the 
Greeks under the general name Epsuma or Gleuxis, while 
the Latin writers have various terms, according to the 
extent to which the evaporation was carried ; as Carenum, 



30 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

one-third ; defrutum, one-half; and sapa, two-thirds." Pro- 
fessor Anthon, in his Greek and Roman Antiquities, 
makes the same statement. 

Cyrus Reading, in liis History of Modern Wines, says : 
" On Mount Lebanon, at Kesroan, good wines are made, 
but they are for the most part vins euit (boiled wines). 
The wine is preserved in jars." — Kitto, ii. 956. 

Dr. A. Russell, in his Natural History of Aleppo, con- 
siders its wine (Helbon) to have been a species of sapa. 
He says : " The inspissated juice of the grape, sapa vina, 
called here dihbs, is brought to the city in skins and sold 
in the public markets ; it has much the appearance of 
coarse honey, is of a sweet taste, and in great use among 
the people of all sorts." — Kitto, ii. 956. 

Leiber, who visited Crete in 1817, says : " When the 
Yenetians were masters of the island, great quantities of 
wine were produced at Rettinio and Candia, and it was 
made by boiling in large coppers, as I myself observed." 
—Nott. 

Mr. Robert Alsop, a minister among the Society of 
Friends, in a letter to Dr. F. R. Lees in 1861, says : " The 
syrup of grape-juice is an article of domestic manufac- 
ture in most every house in the vine districts of the south 
of France. It is simply the juice of the grape boiled 
down to the consistence of treacle." — Bible Coin., p. 
xxxiv. t 

Rev. Dr. Eli Smith, American missionary in Syria, in. 
the Bibliotheca Sacra for November, 1846, describes the 
methods of making wine in Mount Lebanon as numerous, 
but reduces them to three classes : 1. The simple juice 
of the grape is fermented. 2. The juice of the grape is \ 
boiled down before fermentation. 3. The grapes are 
partially dried in the sun before being pressed. With j 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 31 

characteristic candor, he states that he " had very little to 
do with wines all his life, and that his knowledge on the 
subject was very vague until he entered upon the present 
investigation for the purpose of writing the article." He 
further as candidly confesses that the " statements contained 
in his article are not full in every point ;" that " it was 
written in a country where it was very difficult to obtain 
authentic and exact information." Of the vineyards, he 
further states that in "an unbroken space, about two 
miles long by half a mile wide, only a few gallons of in- 
toxicating wine are made. The wine made is an item 
of no consideration ; it is not the most important, but 
rather the least so, of all the objects for which the vine is 
cultivated." He also states that " the only form in which 
the unfermented juice of the grape is preserved is that of 
dibbs, which may be called grape-molasses" Dr. E. 
Smith here confirms the ancient usage of boiling the 
unfermented juice of the grape. The ancients called it 
wine ; the present inhabitants call it dibbs ; and Dr. E. 
Smith calls it grape-molasses. It is the same thing under 
these various designations. " A rose may smell as sweet 
by any other name." 

The Rev. Henry Holmes, American missionary to Con- 
stantinople, in the Bibliotheca Sacra for May, 1848, 
gives the result of his observation. He wrote two years 
subsequently to Dr. Eli Smith, and has supplied what 
\ta,s lacking in Dr. E. Smith's statements which were 
'] not full on every point." He did not rely upon infor- 
mation from others, but personally examined for himself, 
and in every case obtained exact and authentic knowledge. 
JHe says : " Simple grape-juice, without the addition of 
any earth to neutralize the acidity, is boiled from four to 
live hours, so as to reduce it one-fourth the quantity put 



32 THE LAWS 0E FEBMENTATTON AND 

in. After the boiling, for preserving it cool, and that it 
be less liable to ferment, it is put into earthen instead of 
wooden vessels, closely tied over with skin to exclude the 
air. It ordinarily has not a particle of intoxicating qual- 
ity, being used freely by both Mohammedans and Chris- 
tians. Some which I have had on hand for two years has 
undergone no change." " The manner of making and 
preserving this unfermented grape-liquor seems to corre- 
spond with the receipts and descriptions of certain drinks 
included by some of the ancients under the appellation of 
wine." 

" The fabricating of an intoxicating liquor was never 
the chief object for which the grape was cultivated among 
the Jews. Joined with bread, fruits, and the olive-tree, 
the three might well be representatives of the productions 
most essential to them, at the same time that they were 
the most abundantly provided for the support of life." 
He mentions sixteen uses of the grape, wine-making 
being the least important. "I have asked Christians 
from Diarbekir, Aintab, and other places in the interior 
of Asia Minor, and all concur in the same statement." 

Dr. Eli Smith, as above, testifies that "wine is not 
the most important, but the least, of all the objects for 
which the vine is cultivated." These statements are fully 
confirmed by the Rev. Smylie Robson, a missionary to 
the Jews of Syria, who travelled extensively in the moun- 
tains in Lebanon, as may be seen by his letters from 
Damascus and published in the Irish Presbyterian Mis- 
sionary Herald of April and May, 1845. 

The Rev. Dr. Jacobus, commenting on the wine made 
by Christ, says : " This wine was not that fermented 
liquor which passes now under that name. All who 
know of the wines then used will understand rather the 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 33 

unfermented juice of the grape. The present wines of 
Jerusalem and Lebanon, as we tasted them, were com- 
monly boiled and sweet, without intoxicating qualities, 
such as we here get in liquors called wines. The boiling 
prevents the fermentation. Those were esteemed the 
best wines which were least strong." 

The ancients had a motive for boiling the unfermented 
juice. They knew from experience that the juice, by 
reason of the heat of the climate and the sweetness of 
the grapes, would speedily turn sour. To preserve it 
sweet, they naturally resorted to the simple and easy 
method of boiling. 

The art of distillation was then unknown ; it was not 
discovered till the ninth century. 

FILTRATION. 

By nitration, the gluten or yeast is separated from the 
juice of the grape. Whilst the juice will pass through 
the filtering implements, the gluten will not, and, being 
thus separated, the necessary conditions of fermentation 
are destroyed. 

Donavan, already quoted, states that, " if the juice be 
filtered and deprived of its gluten or ferment, the pro- 
duction of alcohol is impossible." Dr. Ure says, as pre- 
viously stated, that fermentation may be prevented " by 
the separation of the yeast either by the filter or by sub- 
sidence." 

The ancient writers, when speaking of the removal of 
the vim, vi, vires, that is, the potency or fermentable 
power of the wine, use the following strong words : eunu- 
chrum, castratum, effceminatum — thus expressing the 
thoroughness of the process by which all fermentation 



84 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

was destroyed. — A.-B. 224. Plutarch, born a.d. 60, 
in his Symposium, says : "Wine is rendered old or feeble 
in strength when it is frequently filtered. The strength 
or spirit being thus excluded, the wine neither inflames 
the brain nor infests the mind and the passions, and is 
much more pleasant to drink." — Bible Com. p. 278. In 
this passage, we are instructed that the filter was not a 
mere strainer, such as the milkmaid uses, but was such 
an instrument as forced the elements of the grape-juice 
asunder, separating the gluten, and thus taking away the 
strength, the spirit, which inflames the head and infests 
the passions. 

Pliny, liber xxiii. cap. 24, says : " Utilissimum (vinum) 
omnibus sacco viribus fractis. The most useful wine has 
all its force or strength broken by the filter." — Bible 
Commentary, pp. 168 and 211. 

Others hold that the true rendering is : " For all the 
sick, the wine is most useful when its forces have been 
broken by the strainer." This does not relieve the diffi- 
culty ; for, when the forces of the wine, which is the 
alcohol, have been broken (fractis, from frango, to break in 
pieces, to dash to pieces), what then is left but the pure juice ? 
The next sentence of Pliny clearly states that the vires or 
forces of the wine are produced by fermentation : " Memi- 
nerimus succum esse qui fervendo vires e musto sibi 
fecerit." " We must bear in mind that there is a succus, ; 
which, by fermenting, would make to itself a vires out f 1 
of the must." The succus represents the gluten or yeast, *■ 
the detention of which in the filter would effectually pre- 
vent all fermentation. — JVott, Edition by F. R. Lees, p.fy 
211. The strainer (saccus) separates the gluten ; for in*l 
no other way can it break the forces, the fermenting power^ 
Smith, in his Greek and Roman Antiquities, says : " Thfh e 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 35 

use of the saecus (filter), it was believed, diminished the 
strength of the liquor. For this reason it was employed 
by the dissipated in order that they might be able to 
swallow a greater quantity without becoming intoxicated." 
Again : " A great quantity of sweet wines was manufac- 
tured by checking the fermentation." Prof. C. Anthon 
makes a similar statement in his Dictionary of Greek 
a/iid Roman Antiquities. 

Again, Pliny : " Inveterari vina saccisque castrari." 
" Wines were rendered old and castrated or deprived of 
all their vigor by filtering." — JSfott, London Ed. 

" Ut plus capiamus vini sacco frangimur vires ;" that 
we may drink the more wine, we break in pieces, vires, 
the strength or spirit, sacco, by the filter. He adds that 
they practised various incentives to increase their thirst. 
— Bible Commentary, p. 168. 

On the words of Horace, " vina liques," Car. lib. i. 
ode ii., the Delphin N~otes says : " Be careful to prepare 
for yourself wine percolated and defecated by the filter, 
and thus rendered sweet and more in accordance to nature 
and a female taste." Again : " The ancients filtered and 
defecated their must repeatedly before they could have 
fermented ; and thus the faeces which nourish the strength 
of the wine being taken away, they rendered the wine 
itself more liquid, weaker, lighter and sweeter, and more 
pleasant to drink." — Bible Commentary, p. 168, and 
Nott, London Edition, p. 79. 

Captain Treat, in 1845, wrote : " "When on the south 
(boast of Italy, last Christmas, I enquired particularly 
(about the wines in common use, and found that those 
Esteemed the best were sweet and unin toxica ting. The 
soiled juice of the grape is in common use in Sicily. 
The Calabrians keep their intoxicating and unintoxicating 



36 THE LAWS OF PEEMENTATION, AND 

wines in separate apartments. The bottles were generally, 
marked. From enquiries, I found that nnfermented 
wines were esteemed the most. It was drunk mixed with 
water. Great pains were taken in the vintage season to 
have a good stock of it laid by. The grape-juice was 
filtered two or three times, and then bottled, and some 
put in casks and buried in the earth — some kept in water 
(to prevent fermentation). — Dr. Lees' Works, vol. iL 
p. 144. 

Gluten is as indispensable to fermentation, whether 
vinous or acetous, as is sugar. It is a most insoluble 
body until it comes in contact with. the oxygen of the 
atmosphere ; but by frequent filtering of the newly- 
pressed juice, the gluten is separated from the juice, and 
thus fermentation prevented.- 

SUBSIDENCE. 

Chemical science teaches that the gluten may be so 
effectually separated from the juice by subsidence as to 
prevent fermentation. The gluten, being heavier than 
the juice, will settle to the bottom by its own weight if 
the mass can be kept from fermentation for a limited 
period. Chemistry tells us that, if the juice is kept at a 
temperature below 45°, it will not ferment. The juice 
being kept cool, the gluten will settle to the bottom, and 
the juice, thus deprived of the gluten, cannot ferment. 
Dr. Ure says : " By lowering the temperature to 45°, if 
the fermenting mass becomes clear at this temperature 
and be drawn off from the subsided yeast, it will not 
ferment again, though it should be heated to the proper 
pitch." — Bible Commentary, p. 168. 

Pliny, liber xiv. c. 9, when speaking of a wine called 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 37 

Aigleuces, that is, always sweet, says : " Id evenit cnra." 
" That wine is produced by care." He then gives the 
method : " Mergunt earn protiims in aqua cados donee 
bruma transeat et consuetudo fiat algendi." " They 
plunge the casks, immediately after they are filled from 
the vat, into water, until winter has passed away and 
the wine has acquired the habit of being cold." — Kitto, 
ii. 955 ; A.-B. 217 ; Smith's Antiquities. Being kept 
below 45°, the gluten settled to the bottom, and thus 
fermentation was prevented. 

Columella gives the receipt : " Yinum dulce sic facere 
oportet." " Gather the grapes and expose them for three 
days to the sun ; on the fourth^ at mid-day, tread them ; 
take the mustum lixivium ; that is, the juice which flows 
into the lake before you use the press, and, when it has 
settled, add one ounce of powdered iris ; strain the wine 
from its fseces, and pour it into a vessel. This wine will 
be sweet, firm or durable, and healthy to the body." — 
JSfott, London Ed. 213 ; A.-B. 216. 

We notice in this receipt : 1, the lixivium, which the 
lexicon (Leverett) defines " must, which flows sponta- 
neously from grapes before they are pressed /" 2, this is 
allowed to settle, the gluten thus subsiding ; 3, pounded 
iris is put into the juice, and then it is strained or fil- 
tered. Here are three combined operations to prevent 
fermentation. 

The same author, liber xii. cap. 29 (see Nott and A.- 
B. 216), mentions a receipt : " That your must may 
always be as sweet as when it is new, thus proceed: 
Before you apply the press to the fruit, take the newest 
must from the lake, put into a new amphora, bung it up, 
and cover it very carefully with pitch, lest any water 
should enter ; then immerse it in a cistern or pond of 



38 

pure cold water, and allow no part of the amphora to 
remain above the surface. After forty days, take it out, 
and it will remain sweet for a year." Prof. C. Anthon 
gives the same receipt in his Dictionary of Greek and 
Roman Antiquities. We here notice : 1, that the new- 
est — the unfermented juice — is taken ; 2, it is put in a new 
amphora or jar free from all ferment from former use; 
3, the air is perfectly excluded ; 4, it is immersed in cold 
water for forty days. Being below 45°, fermentation 
could not commence. Thus there was ample time for the 
gluten to settle at the bottom, thus leaving the juice pure 
and sweet. 

Columella, liber xii. cap. 51, gives a receipt for mak- 
ing oleum gleucinum : " To about ninety pints of the 
best must in a barrel, eighty pounds of oil are to be added, 
and a small bag of spices sunk to the place where the oil 
and wine meet ; the oil to be poured off on the ninth 
day. The spices in the bag are to be pounded and re- 
placed, filling up the cask with another eighty pounds of 
oil; this oil to be drawn off after seven days." — Bible 
Commentary, p. 297. Here notice : 1, The best must — 
the unfermented juice — is taken ; 2, This, when in the cask, 
is covered with oil, which excludes the air from the juice ; 

3, A bag of spices is placed in contact with the juice ; 

4, After nine days, in which the gluten would settle, the 
oil is poured off; 5, The spices are pounded and replaced, 
oil again is poured in, to remain seven days, and then 
drawn off, leaving the juice pure and unfermented. 

The ancients preserved some of their wines by depu- 
rating them. "-The must, or new wine," says Mr. T. IB. 
Carr, " was refined with the yolks of pigeon eggs (Ro- 
man Antiquities), which occasioned the subsidence of tUe 
albumen or ferment. But on the new wine being allowed 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. H9 

to stand, this principle would subside by natural gravity ; 
hence the ancients poured off the upper and luscious por- 
tion of the wine into another vessel, repeating the process 
as often as necessary, until they procured a clear, sweet 
wine which would keep." — Kitto, ii. 955. 

Harmer, on the authority of Charden, observes that " in 
the East they frequently pour wine from vessel to vessel ; 
for when they begin one, they are obliged immediately to 
empty it into smaller vessels or into bottles, or it would 
grow sour.'' Chemistry teaches that sweet juices in hot 
climates, if left to themselves, immediately pass into the 
acetous fermentation and become sour. To avoid this the 
above process was adopted. 

FUMIGATION. 

Dr. Ure states that fermentation may be stopped by 
the application or admixture of substances containing 
sulphur; that the operation consists partly in absorbing 
oxygen, whereby the elimination of the yeasty particles 
is prevented. Adams in his Roman Antiquities, on the 
authority of Pliny and others, says "that the Romans 
fumigated their wines with the fumes of sulphur; that 
they also mixed with the mustuni, newly pressed juice, 
yolks of eggs, and other articles containing sulphur. 
When thus deftecabantur (from defseco, ' to cleanse from 
the dregs, to strain through a strainer, refine, purify, defe- 
cate'), it was poured (diffusum) into smaller vessels or 
casks covered over with pitch, and bunged or stopped up." 

Gardiner, in his Dictionary of the Arts, article Wine, 
says : " The way to preserve new wine, in the state of 
must, is to put it up in very strong but small casks, firmly 
closed on all sides, by which means it will be kept from 



40 

fermenting. But if it should happen to fall into fermen- 
tation, the only way to stop it is by the fumes of sul- 
phur." — Thayer, p. 22. 

Here we notice two important facts. The first is, that 
the exclusion of the air from the fresh juice will prevent 
fermentation. The second is, that, when fermentation has 
commenced, the fumes of sulphur will arrest it. How 
more certainly it will prevent fermentation if applied to 
the new wine. 

Cyrus Reading says of sulphur, " Its object is to im- 
part to wine clearness and the principle of preservation, 
and to prevent fermentation." — Nott, London Ed. p. 82. 

Mr. T. S. Carr says that the application of the fuma- 
rium to the mellowing of wines was borrowed from the 
Asiatics, and that the exhalation would go on until the 
wine was reduced to the state of a syrup." — Kitto, ii. 956. 

" Such preparations," says Sir Edward Barry, " are 
made by the modern Turks, which they frequently carry 
with them on long journeys, and occasionally take as a 
strengthening and reviving cordial.'' — Kitto, ii. 956. 

" In the London Encyclopaedia ' stum ' is termed an un- 
fermented wine ; to prevent it from fermenting, the casks 
are matched, or have brimstone burnt in them." — Nott, 
London Ed. p. 82. 

Count Dandalo, on the Art of Preserving the Wines of 
Italy, first published at Milan, 1812, says, " The last pro- 
cess in wine-making is sulphurization : its object is to se- 
cure the most long-continued preservation of all wines, 
even of the very commonest sort." — Nott. 

A familiar illustration and confirmation may be liad 
from the expressed juice of the apple. If the fresh >in- 
fermented apple-juice is not cider, what is it ? Every hr>y, 
straw in hand, knows that it is cider — so does every ••ar- 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 41 

mer and housewife. After it has fermented, it is also 
called cider. It is a generic word, applicable to the 
juice of the apple in all its stages, just as yaf/in in the 
Hebrew, oinos in the Greek, vinwm in the Latin, and 
wine in English are generic words, and denote the juice of 
the grape in all conditions. When the barrel is filled with 
the fresh unfermented juice of the apple, add sulphur, or 
mustard-seed, make the barrel air-tight, and keep it where 
it is cold, and fermentation will not take place. "When 
the gluten has subsided and, by its specific gravity, has 
settled at the bottom, the pure unfermented juice may 
be bottled and kept sweet. This, men call cider ; they 
have no other name for it. 

In all these four methods, but one object is sought — it 
is to preserve the juice sweet. 

DID THE ANCIENTS USE AND CALL THEM WINE? 

In all the extracts we have made in the preceding 
pages, the writers call the grape-juice wine, whether 
boiled or filtered, or subsided or fumigated. It may be 
well again to refer to a few cases. 

Pliny says the " Roman wines were as thick as honey," 
also that the " Albanian wine was very sweet or lus- 
cious, and that it took the third rank among all the wines." 
He also tells of a Spanish wine in his day, called " inerti- 
culum " — that is, would not intoxicate — from " iners," 
inert, without force or spirit, more properly termed " jus- 
ticus sobriani,". sober wine, which would not inebriate. 
— Anti-Bac. p. 221. 

According to Plautus, b.c. 200, even mustum signified 
both wine and sweet wine. — JVott, London Ed. p. 78. 

ISTicander says: "And iEneus, having squeezed the 



42 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

juice into hollow cups, called it wine (oinon)." — JVott, 
p. 78. " The Greeks as well as the Hebrews called the 
fresh juice wine." — JVott, London Ed. p. 78. 

Columella says the Greeks called this unintoxicating 
wine " Aniethyston," from Alpha, negative, and methusis, 
intoxicate — that is, a wine which would not intoxicate. 
He adds that it was a good wine, harmless, and called 
"iners," because it would not affect the nerves, but at 
the same time it was not deficient in flavor. — A.-B. 
p. 221. 

Aristotle says of sweet wine, glukus, that it would not 
intoxicate. And that the wine of Arcadia was so thick 
that it was necessary to scrape it from the skin bottles in 
which it was contained, and dissolve the scrapings in 
water. — JVott, London Ed. p. 80. 

Homer (Odyssey, book ix.) tells us that Ulysses took in 
his boat " a goat-skin of sweet black wine, a divine drink, 
which Marion, the priest of Apollo, had given him — it 
was sweet as honey — it was imperishable, or would keep 
for ever; that when it was drunk, it was diluted with 
twenty parts water, and that from it a sweet and divine 
odor exhaled." — JVott, London Ed. p. 55. 

Horace, liber i. ode xviii. line 21, thus wrote : 

" Hie innocentis pocula Lesbii 
Duces sub umbra." 

Professor Christopher Smart, of Pembroke College, Cam- 
bridge, England, more than a hundred years since, when 
there was no controversy about fermented or unfermente^l 
wines, thus translated this passage: "Here shall yotf. 
quaff, under a shade, cups of unintoxicating wineP 

Again, we read in Horace, liber, iii. ode viii. line 9 : 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 43 

" Hie dies, anno redeunte, festus, 
Corticem adstrictnm pice divomebit 
Amphorae funmin bibere institute 
Consule Tullo. 

" Sume, Maecenas, cyathos amici 
Sospitis centum ; et vigiles lucernas 
Perfor in lucem : procul omnis esto 
Clamor et ira." 



I take again the translation of Professor Smart : " This 
day, sacred in the revolving year, shall remove the cork 
fastened with pitch from that jar which was set to fu- 
migate in the consulship of Tullus. Take, my Maecenas, 
an hundred glasses, on account of the safety of your friend, 
and continue the wakeful lamps even to daylight : all 
clamor and passion be far away." 

This Horace calls wine — it was fumigated — the am- 
phora was corked and fastened with pitch, and that an 
hundred glasses might be drunk without clamor or pas- 
sion. The Delphin Notes to Horace state, " The ancients 
filtered their wines repeatedly, before they could have fer- 
mented." 

Athengeus says : " The sweet wine (gluJcus), which 
among the Sicilians is called Pollian, may be the same as 
the Biblinos oinos" " Sweet kinds of wines {oinos) 
do not make the head heavy," as Hippocrates says. His 
words are, " Glukus is less calculated than other wine 
(oinodeos) to make the head heavy, and it takes less 
hold of the mind." He speaks of the mild Chian and 
the sweet Bibline, and Plautus of the toothless Thanium 
and Coan, all of which are comprehended under oinos, 
wine. — JVott, London Ed. p. 80. 

Professor M. Stuart, on pages 4A and 45 of his Letter to 



44 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION", AND 

Dr. JVott, published 184:8, mentions that some forty years 
ago Judge Swift told him that, when the Hon. O. Els- 
worth, the first Chief- Justice of the TJ. S. Supreme Court, 
was on his way to France as ambassador, accompanied by 
Judge Swift, of Connecticut, as secretary, they were ship- 
wrecked and cast upon the coast of Spain. On their way 
to Paris, among the mountains of Spain, a wine was 
strongly urged upon them which would not intoxicate. 
Judge Swift first made the experiment on himself. He 
found that it did not produce any tendency of the kind. 
The Chief- Justice and himself used to drink a bottle each 
with their dinner, and a small bottle at night. It was 
found to be a precious balm to the ambassador, who had 
become fearfully exhausted by continued sea-sickness. 

Judge Swift, continues the Professor, assured me that 
" he never, before or since, tasted of anything that would 
bear comparison with the delicacy and exquisite flavor 
and refreshing effect of this wine, when taken with due 
preparation of cooling and mixing with water. He ex- 
pressed his confident belief that a gallon of it drunk at a 
time, if a man could swallow down so much, would not 
affect his head in the least degree." 

Polybius states that " among the Romans the women 
were allowed to drink a wine which is called passum, made 
from raisins, which drink very much resembled Aegos- 
ihenicm and Cretan gleukos (sweet wine), and which men 
use for the purpose of allaying excessive thirst." — JVott, 
London Ed. p. 80. 

Henderson, in his History of Wines, p. 44, comment- 
ing on the boiled wine of the Ponian women referred 
to by Yirgil (Georg. i. 293), truly says, " The use of this 
inspissated juice became general." Pev. "W. H. Pule, in 
his Brief Enquiry, confesses that it was the protropos xx 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 45 

prodromos oinos of the Greeks." — JFott, London Ed., Lees' 
Appendix, p. 221. 

Smith's Greek and Roman Antiquities says : " That 
which flowed from the clusters, in consequence of their 
pressure upon each other, to which the inhabitants of 
Mytelene gave the name of jprotiropos" 

The prohibition of intoxicating wines to women was 
enforced by the severest penalties. "Plato, Aristotle, 
Plutarch, and others have noticed the hereditary trans- 
mission of intemperate propensities, and the legislation 
that imposed abstinence upon women had unquestiona- 
bly in view the greater vigor of the offspring — the ' mens 
sana in corpore sano ' (healthy minds in a healthy body)." 
— Bible Commentary, p. 72. 

" Modern medical enquiries have made clear the fact, 
surmised by some ancient philosophers, of the power- 
ful influence of maternal regimen on the uterine condi- 
tion and future health of children." " That indulgence 
in the use of strong drink by expectant mothers would 
be injurious to their offspring was known to the learned 
and wise among the ancients." — Bible Commentary, p. Y2. 

Matthew Henry, in the case of Samson, remarks, 
" Women with child ought conscientiously to avoid what- 
ever they have reason to think will be in any way preju- 
dicial to the health or good condition of the fruit of their 
body. And perhaps Samson's mother was to refrain from 
wine and strong drink, not only because he was designed 
for a Nazarite, but because he was designed for a man 
of strength, which his mother's temperance would contri- 
bute to." 

i That old Poman prohibitory law, which forbade intoxi- 
cating wine whilst it allowed the pure juice, was founded 
in common sense and benevolence. It is to be regretted 



46 

that they were not as wise and merciful towards them- 
selves as they were towards their wives and the health 
and strength of their offspring. 

Dr. Laurie, who holds that " it is the nature of wine to 
be fermented," and " that fermentation is essential to its 
becoming wine," still admits that there are "traces of 
unfermented wine in classical authors," and that it "is 
known in history ;" which he thus strangely qualifies — 
known in history " only as one of the unnatural and rare 
luxuries of the most corrupt period of the Roman Em- 
pire." Queer logic this, that unintoxicating wine should 
indicate the most corrupt period of the Roman Empire ! 
Human nature must have greatly changed, for now the 
course of history is rum, rags, ruin. And experience 
teaches that the use of intoxicating drinks is associated 
with desecrated Sabbaths, loose views of morality and 
religion, and the increase of pauperism, crime, and taxa- 
tion. 

The Eev. W. H. Rule, already named, says : " This 
very grape-juice, notwithstanding its purity, was chiefly 
known in antiquity as the casual drink of the peasantry, 
or, when carefully preserved, as the choice beverage of 
epicures. It was sweet to the taste, and had not acquired 
the asperity consequent on the abstraction (conversion) 
of saccharine matter by fermentation." — Nott, London 
Ed., Appendix C, p. 222. 

Smith, in his Greek and Roman Antiquities, says : " The 
sweet, unfermented juice of the grape was termed gleu?$os 
by the Greeks and mustum by the Romans — the latter 
word being properly an adjective signifying new or fresh." 
"A portion of the must was used at once, being drunk 
fresh." " When it was desired to preserve a quantity in 
the sweet state, an amphora was taken and coated with 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 47 

pitch within and without, it was filled with mustum lixi- 
vium, and corked so as to be perfectly air-tight. It was 
then immersed in a tank of cold fresh water, or buried in 
wet sand, and allowed to remain for six weeks or two 
months. The contents, after this process, was found to 
remain unchanged for a year, and hence the name, aeigleu- 
kos — that is, ' semper mustum,' always sweet." 

Chas. Anthon, LL.D., in his Dictionary of Greek and 
Roman Antiquities, gives the same receipt and definitions, 
and fully sustains the position that these preparations of 
the unfermented grape-juice were by the ancients known 
as wine. 

We have a great variety of ancient receipts for making 
different kinds of wine. . Some of them, as we have seen, 
were not fermented, and therefore not intoxicating. Others 
were intoxicating. The receipts mention the different 
articles out of which wines were made, such as millet, 
dates, lotus-tree, figs, beans, pears, pomegranates, myrtle, 
hellebore, etc. Foreign ingredients were formerly added 
to wines to make them intoxicating. These wines were not 
approved, and towards these not temperance but total 
abstinence was enjoined. Various drugs are specified by 
which the juice was made more potent, as wormwood, 
hellebore. We learn from Homer that Helen prepared 
for Telemachus a cup in which a powerful drug was in- 
fused. Also,.that Circe made use of " direful drugs." Such 
preparations were common in the East. The Orientals of 
the present day have a knowledge of drugs which they 
combine with beverages for profligate purposes. We read 
in Isaiah v. 22 of " men of strength to mingle strong 
drink." The juice of the grape was " mixed with pun- 
gent and heady drugs in order to gratify a base and insati- 
able appetite." Particularly, in Lamentations of Jeremiah 



48 

in. 15 we read, " He hath made ine drunk with wormwood." 
J. G. Koht, in his Travels in Austria, mentions a wine of 
wormwood. To make it, the juice is boiled with certain 
herbs. This wine decoction is as renowned in Hungary 
as the Tokay Essence. — Bible Commentary, p 203. 

The divine anger is symbolized by the cup which is " full 
of mixture ;" Ps. lxxv. 8 ; " cup of his fury," Isaiah li. 
17; "wine-cup of his fury," Jer. xxv. 15. 

We cannot imagine that Pliny, Columella, Yarro, Cato, 
and others were either cooks or writers of cook-books, 
but were intelligent gentlemen moving in the best circles 
of society. So when they, with minute care, give the 
receipts for making sweet wine, which will remain so dur- 
ing the year, and the processes were such as to prevent 
fermentation, we are persuaded that these were esteemed 
in their day. That they were so natural and so simple as 
to like these sweet, harmless beverages is rather in their 
favor, and not to be set down against them. That there 
were men in their day, as there are many in ours, who 
loved and used intoxicating drinks, is a fact which marked 
their degradation. 

WE5TE WITH WATEK. 

There is abundance of evidence that the ancients mixed 
their wines with water ; not because they were so strong, 
with alcohol, as to require dilution, but because, being rich 
syrups, they needed water to prepare them for drinking. 
The quantity of water was regulated by the richness of 
the wine and the time of year. 

" Those ancient authors who treat upon domestic man- 
ners abound with allusions to this usage. Hot water, 
tepid water, or cold water was used for the dilution of 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 49 

wine according to the season." "Hesiod prescribed, 
during the summer months, three parts of water to one of 
wine." " Nicochares considers two parts of wine to five 
of water as the proper proportion." " According to 
Homer, Pramnian and Meronian wines required twenty 
parts of water to one of wine. Hippocrates considered 
twenty parts of water to one of the Thracian wine to be 
the proper beverage." " Theophrastus says the wine at 
Thasos is wonderfully delicious." Athenseus states that 
the Tseniotic has such a degree of richness or fatness that 
when mixed with water it seemed gradually to be diluted, 
much in the same way as Attic honey well mixed. — Bible 
Commentary, p. 17. 

Captain Treat says, " The unfermented wine is esteemed 
the most in the south of Italy, and wine is drunk mixed 
with water." — Lees' Works. Also in Spain and Syria. 

" In Italy the habit (mixing wine with water) was so 
universal that there was an establishment at Rome for the 
public use. It was called Thermopolium, and, from the 
accounts left of it, was upon a large scale. The remains 
of several have been discovered among the ruins of Pom- 
peii. Cold, warm, and tepid water was procurable at these 
establishments, as well as wine, and the inhabitants resorted 
there for the purpose of drinking, and also sent their ser- 
vants for hot water." — JSToU, London Ed. p. 83. 

" The annexed engraving of the Thermopolium is copied 
from the scarce work of Andreas Baccius (De Nat. Yin- 
orum Hist., Rome, 1597, lib. iv. p. 178). The plan was 
obtained by himself, assisted by two antiquaries, from the 
ruins of the Diocletian Baths (Rome). Nothing can more 
clearly exhibit the contrast between the ancient wines and 
those of modern Europe than the widely different mode 
of treating them. The hot water was often necessary, 



50 



THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 



says Sir Edward Barry, to dissolve their more inspissated 
and old wines.'' — Kitto, ii. p. 956. 




" Nor was it peculiar to pagans to mingle water with 
wine for beverage and at feasts ; nor to profane writers 
to record the fact. It is written of Wisdom, she mingled 
her wine — Prov. ix. 2 — and so written by an inspired 
penman." — JVott, London Ed. p. 84. 

This mixed wine must be different from that named in 
Ps. lxxv, 8. " full of mixture," which we have seen is the 
symbol of the divine vengeance, the cup prepared for his 
enemies. But in Prov. ix. 2, it is a blessing to which 
friends are invited. If in this passage the mixture is of 
aromatic spices, in addition to the water necessary to di- 
lute the syrup, it was not to fire the blood with alcohol, 
but to gratify the taste with delicate flavors. 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 51 

The Passover was celebrated with wine mixed with 
water. According to Lightfoot, each p'erson — man, wo- 
man, and child — drank four cups. Christ and his disciples 
having celebrated the Passover, he took of the bread and 
the wine that remained, and instituted the Lord's Supper. 
The wine was, as we believe, the rich syrup diluted with 
water. This kind of wine met all the requirements of 
the law concerning leaven — the true rendering of Mat- 
sah, according to Dr. D. F. Lees, being unfermented 
things. The conclusion to which these varied sources of 
proof bring us may thus be stated : 

1. That unfermented beverages existed, and were a com- 
mon drink among the ancients. 

2. That to preserve their very sweet juices, in their hot 
climate, they resorted to boiling and other methods which 
destroyed the power and activity of the gluten, or effectu- 
ally separated it from the juice of the grape. 

3. That these were called wines, were used, and were 
highly esteemed. 

Prof. M. Stuart says, " Facts show that the ancients not 
only preserved their wine unfermented, but regarded it 
as of a higher flavor and liner quality than fermented 
wine." — Letter to Dr. Nott. 

That they also had drinks that would intoxicate can- 
not be denied. All that we have aimed to show is that 
intoxicating wines were not the only wines in use. 

With the teachings of chemical science, and with the 
knowledge of the tastes and usages of the ancients, we 
are the better prepared to examine and understand the 
Bible, which was written when those tastes and usages 
were in actual operation. Common honesty demands 



52 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

that we interpret the Scriptures with the eye, the taste, 
and the usages of the ancients, and not with the eye, the 
taste, and the usages of the moderns. We should interpret 
each text so as to be in harmony not only with the drift 
and scope of the whole teachings of the Bible, but also with 
the well-ascertained and established laws of nature. It 
certainly is as important to harmonize the interpretations 
of the Bible with the teachings of chemistry and the laws 
of our physical, intellectual, and moral nature, violated by 
alcoholic drinks, as it is to harmonize the interpretations 
of the same word of God with the ascertained facts of 
geology and astronomy. To these latter topics, Biblical 
scholars have given most praiseworthy attention. Let the 
same anxious interest animate our endeavors to harmonize 
the Bible teachings with clearly ascertained facts and with 
the truth which the temperance reformation has made 
indisputable. 

The will of God registered in the laws of nature, and the 
will of God registered in the inspired revelation, cannot 
possibly contradict each other. They must harmonize. 
Whatever difficulties may now stand in the way of this 
harmony, we know that, as science becomes more intelli- 
gently informed of the laws of nature, and as the inter- 
pretation of the Bible becomes more thorough and emanci- 
pated, the testimony of God's works and word will per- 
fectly harmonize. 

" The books of nature and revelation were written by 
the same unerring hand. The former is more full and 
explicit in relation to the physical, the latter in relation to 
the moral, laws of our nature ; still, however, where both 
touch on the same subject, they will ever be found, when 
rightly interpreted, to be in harmony." " Nature and 
revelation are as little at variance on the wine question 



THE WINES OP THE ANCIENTS. 53 

as on other questions, and when rightly consulted it will 
he found to be so. It is not in the text, but in the inter- 
pretation, that men have felt straitened in their conscien- 
ces ; and though this feeling should continue, unless the 
providence of God changes, it will not alter the facts of 
the case." — Nott, London Ed. p. 75. 

THE SCRIPTURES. 

It should be constantly borne in mind that the Author- 
ized Version was translated when the drinking usages 
were well-nigh universal. The attention of Christians 
and of thoughtful men had not been called to the perni- 
cious influence of alcoholic drinks. Though drunkenness 
existed, still no plans were then devised either for its 
prevention or its cure. It was regarded as an evil inci- 
dent to hospitality and social cheer. 

The translators, with the most honest purpose, faith- 
fully, according to their ability, rendered into English the 
original Scriptures, but were nevertheless unintentional- 
ly and unconsciously influenced by the philosophy and 
usages of their day. As the river carries in its waters 
that which with absolute certainty tells of the soil through 
which it has flowed, so the translators must carry into the 
renderings which they give evidences of the prevailing 
usages and modes of thought of their clay. Thus inno- 
cently, though naturally, shades of meaning have been 
given to particular passages. These have come down to 
us with feelings of sacred reverence. To give a new ren- 
dering seems to be almost sacrilege. With this feeling 
every department of science has to contend when it would 
throw new light upon the sacred page. Astronomy and 
geology have met this difficulty, and it is not strange that 



54 

the cause of temperance should have to contend with this 
feeling, notwithstanding the convictions of temperance 
men are the result of experience and diligent, patient 
investigation. 

We would not distrust, much less weaken, confidence 
in the Word of God. We would, however, remind the 
reader that only the original text is inspired ; that no 
translation, much less no mere human interpretation, is 
ultimate authority. 

GENERIC WORDS. 

Professor M. Stuart, in his Letter to Rev. Dr. Nott, 
February 1, 1848, says, page 11 : " There are in the Scrip- 
tures (Hebrew) but two generic words to designate such 
drinks as may be of an intoxicating nature when fer- 
mented and which are not so before fermentation. In 
the Hebrew Scriptures the word yayin, in its broadest 
meaning, designates grape-juice, or the liquid which the 
fruit of the vine yields. This may be new or old, sweet 
or sour, fermented or unfermented, intoxicating or unin- 
toxicating. The simple idea of grape-juice or vine-liquor 
is the basis and essence of the word, in whatever connec- 
tion it may stand. The specific sense which we must 
often assign to the word arises not from the word itself 
but from the connection in which it stands." 

He justifies this statement by various examples which 
illustrate the comprehensive character of the word. 

In the London edition (1863) of President E. Nott's 
Lectures, with an introduction by Tayler Lewis, LL.D., 
Professor of Greek in Union College, and several appen- 
dices by F. P. Lees, he says : " Yayin is a generic term, 
and, when not restricted in its meaning by some word or 



THE WINES OP THE ANCIENTS. 55 

circumstance, comprehends vinous beverage of every sort, 
however produced. It is, however, as we have seen, often 
restricted to the fruit of the vine in its natural and unin- 
toxicating state " (p. 68). 

Kittos Cyclopaedia, article Wine : " Yayin in Bible use 
is a very general term, including every species of wine 
made from grapes (vinos ampelinos), though in later ages 
it became extended in its application to wine made from 
other substances." 

Rev. Dr. Murphy, Professor of Hebrew at Belfast, 
Ireland, says : " Yayin denotes all stages of the juice of 
the grape." 

"Yayin (sometimes written yin, yain, or am) stands for 
the expressed juice of the grape — the context sometimes 
indicating whether the juice had undergone or not the 
process of fermentation. It is mentioned one hundred 
and forty-one times."— Bible Commentary, Appendix B, 
p. 412. 

Shakar, " the second, is of the like tenor," says 
Professor Stuart, page 14, but applies wholly to a differ- 
ent liquor. The Hebrew name is shakar, which is usu- 
ally translated strong drink in the Old Testament and 
in the New. The mere English reader, of course, inva- 
riably gets from this translation a wrong idea of the real 
meaning of the original Hebrew. He attaches to it the 
idea which the English phrase now conveys among us, 
viz., that of a strong, intoxicating drink, like our distilled 
liquors. .As to distillation, by which alcoholic liquors 
are now principally obtained, it was utterly unknown to 
the Hebrews, and, indeed to all the world in ancient 
times." " The true original idea of shakar is a liquor 
obtained from dates or other fruits (grapes excepted), or 
barley, millet, etc., which were dried, or scorched, and a 



56 

decoction of them was mixed with honey, aromatics, 
etc." 

On page 15 he adds : " Both words are generic. The 
first means vinons liqnor of any and every kind; the 
second means a corresponding liquor from dates and other 
fruits, or from several grains. Both of the liquors have 
in them the saccharine principle y and therefore they may 
become alcoholic. But both may be kept and used in 
an unfermented state ; when, of course, no quantity that 
a man could drink of them would intoxicate him in any 
perceptible degree." "The two words which I have 
thus endeavored to define are the only two in the Old 
Testament which are generic, and which have reference to 
the subject now in question." 

"Shakak (sometimes written shechar, shekar) signi- 
fies ' sweet drink ' expressed from fruits other than the 
grape, and drunk in an unfermented or fermented state. 
It occurs in the O. T. twenty-three times." — Bible Com- 
mentary, p. 418. Kitttfs Cyclopaedia says : " Shakar is a 
generic term, including palm-wine and other saccharine 
beverages, except those prepared from the vine." It is 
in this article defined " sweet drink? 

Dr. F. K. Lees, page xxxii. of his Preliminary Disserta- 
tion to the Bible Commentary, says shaJcar, " saccharine 
drink," is related to the word for sugar in all the In do- 
Germanic and Semitic languages, and is still applied 
throughout the East, fromTndia to Abyssinia, to the palm 
sap, the shaggery made from it, to the date juice and sy- 
rup, as well as to sugar and to the fermented palm-wine. 
It has by usage grown into a generic term for ' drinks,' 
including fresh juices and inebriating liquors other than 
those coming from the grape. See under the heading, 
" Other Hebrew Words " for further illustrations, page 58. 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 57 

Tirosh, in Kinds Cyclopaedia, is defined " vintage 
fruit." In Bible Commentary, p. 414 : " Tirosli is a col- 
lective name for the natural produce of the vine." 
Again, Bible Commentary, p. xxiv. : " Tirosh is not wine 
at all, but the fruit of the vineyard in its natural condi- 
tion." A learned Biblical scholar, in a volume on the 
wine question, published in London, 1841, holds that 
tirosh is not wine, but fruit. This doubtless may be its 
meaning in some passages, but in others it can only mean 
wine, as, for example, Prov. iii. 10 : " Thy presses shall 
burst out with new wine " (tirosh) ; Isa. lxii. 8 : " The 
sons of the stranger shall not drink thy new wine" 
(tirosh). 

" On the whole, it seems to me quite clear," says Prof. 
Stuart, p. 28, " that tirosh is a species of wine, and not 
a genus, like yayin, which means grape-juice in any form, 
or of any quality, and in any state, and usually is made 
definite only by the context." 

"-Tirosh is connected with corn and the fruit of the 
olive and the orchard nineteen times ; with corn alone, 
eleven times ; with the vine, three times ; and is other- 
wise named five times : in all, thirty-eight times." " It 
is translated in the Authorized Version twenty-six times 
by wine, eleven times by new wine (Neh. x. 39, xiii. 
5, 12 ; Prov. iii. 10 ; Isa. xxiv. 7, lxv. 8 ; Hos. iv. 14, 
ix. 2 ; Joel i. 10 ; Hag. i. 11 ; Zach. ix. 17), and once 
(Micah vi. 15) by ' sweet wine,' where the margin has new 
wine." — Bible Commentary, p. 415. 

So uniform is the good use of this word that there is 
but one doubtful exception (Hosea iv. 11) : " Whore- 
dom and wine (yayin), and new wine (tirosh), take away 
the heart." Here are three different things, each of which 
is charged with taking away the heart. As whoredom is 



68 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

not the same as yayin, so yayin is not the same as tirosh. 
If physical intoxication is not a necessary attribute of the 
first, then why is it of the third, especially when the sec- 
ond is adequate for intoxication ? If yayin and tirosh 
each means intoxicating wine, then why use both ? It 
would then read, whoredom and yayin (intoxicating wine) 
and tirosh (intoxicating wine) take away the heart, which 
is tautological. The three terms are symbolical. 

'Whoredom is a common designation of idolatry, which 
the context particularly names. This steals the heart 
from God as really as does literal whoredom. 

Yayin may represent drunkenness or debased sensu- 
ality. This certainly takes away the heart. 

Tirosh may represent luxury, and, in this application, 
dishonesty, as tirosh formed a portion of the tithes, 
rapacity in exaction, and perversion in their use, is fitly 
charged with taking away the heart. 

Certain interpreters imagine that only alcoholic drinks 
take away the heart ; but we know from the Bible that 
pride, ambition, worldly pleasures, fulness of bread, 
Ezek. xvi. 49, and other things, take away the heart. 

G. H. Shanks, in his review of Dr. Laurie, says : " In 
vine-growing lands, grapes are to owners what wheal, 
corn, flax, etc., are to agriculturists, or what bales of cot- 
ton or bank-notes are to merchants. Do these never take 
away the heart of the possessor from God ?" 

OTHER HEBREW WORDS. 

"We extract from Dr. F. R. Lees' Appendix B of Bibli- 
cal Commentary the following, pp. 415-418 : 

Khemer is a word descriptive of the foaming appear- 
ance of the juice of the grape newly expressed, or when 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 59 



undergoing fermentation. It occurs but nine times in all, 
including once a verb, and six times in its Chaldee form 
of Jchamar or Jchamrah. Deut. xxxii. 14 ; Ezra vi. 9, 
vii. 22 ; Ps. lxxv. 8 ; Isa. xxvii. 2 ; Dan. v. 1, 2, 
4, 23. 

Liebig says : " Vegetable juice in general becomes tur- 
bid wlien in contact with the air before fermentation 
commences." — Chemistry of Agriculture, 3d edition. 
" Thus, it appears, foam or turbidness (what the Hebrews 
called khemer, and applied to the foaming blood of the 
grape) is no proof of alcohol being present." — Bible 
Commentary, Prelim, xvi. note. 

Ahsis (sometimes written ousts, asie, osis) is specially 
applied to the juice of newly-trodden grapes or other 
fruit. It occurs five times. Cant. viii. 2; Isa. xlix. 
26 ; Joel i. 5, iii. 18, Amos ix. 13. 

Soveh (sometimes written sole, sobhe) denotes a 
luscious and probably boiled wine (Latin, sapa). It occurs 
three times. Isa. i. 22; Hosea iv. 18 ; Nairn m i. 14. 

" It is chiefly interesting as affording a link of connec- 
tion between classical wines and those of Judea, through 
an obviously common name, being identical with the 
Greek hepsema, the Latin sapa, and the modern Italian 
and French sabe — boiled grape-juice. The inspissated 
wines, called defrutum and syrazum, were, according to 
Pliny (xiv. 9), a species of it. The last name singularly 
suggests the instrument in which it was prepared — the 
syr, or caldron." — Bible Commentary, Prelim, xxiii. 

Mesek (sometimes written mesecli), literally, a mix- 
ture, is used with its related forms, mezeg and mimsak, to 
denote some liquid compounded of various ingredients. 
These words occur as nouns four times, and in a verbal 
shape five times. Ps, lxxv. 8 ; Prov. xxiii. 30 ; Cant. 



60 



vii. 2 ; Isa. lxv. 11. The verbal forms occur Prov. ix. 2, 
5 ; also, in Ps. cii. 9 ; Isa. xix. 14. 

Ashishah (sometimes written eshishah) signifies some 
kind of fruit-cake, probably cake of pressed grapes or 
raisins. It occurs four times, and in each case is associ- 
ated by the Authorized Version with some kind of drink. 
2 Sam. vi. 19 ; 1 Chron. xvi. 3 ; Cant. ii. 5 ; Hosea iii. 1. 

Shemarlm is derived from shamar, to preserve, and 
has the general signification of things preserved. It occurs 
five times. In Exodus xii. 42, the same word, differ- 
ently pointed, is twice translated as signifying to be kept 
(observed). Ps. Ixxv. 8, dregs ; Isa. xxv. 6, fat things ; 
Jer. xlviii. 11, lees; Zeph. i. 12, lees. 

Mamtaqqim is derived from mahthaq, to suck, and de- 
notes sweetness. It is applied to the mouth (Cant. v. 16) 
as full of sweet things. In ISTeh. viii. 10, "drink the 
sweet " mamtaqqim, sweetness, sweet drinks. 

Shakar (sometimes written shechar, shekar) signifies 
sweet drink expressed from fruits other than the grape, 
and drunk in an unfermented or fermented state. It oc- 
curs in the Old Testament twenty-three times. Lev. 
x. 9 ; Numb. vi. 3 (twice wine and vinegar), xxviii. 7 ; 
Deut. xiv. 26, xxix. 6 ; Judges xiii. 4, 7, 14 ; 1 Sam. i. 
15 ; Ps. lxix. 12; Prov. xx. 1, xxxi. 4, 6; Isa. v. 11, 22, 
xxiv. 9, xxviii. 7, xxix. 9, Ivi. 12; Micah ii. 11. Shakar 
is uniformly translated strong drink in the Authorized 
Version, except in Numb, xxviii. 7 (strong wine), and in 
Ps. lxix. 12, where, instead of drinkers of shaJcar, the 
Authorized Version reads drunkards. (See " Generic 
Words.") 

GREEK, LATTNy AND ENGLISH GENERIC WORDS. 

Oinos. — Biblical scholars are agreed that in the Septua- 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 61 

gint or Greek translation of the Old Testament and in 
the ^STew Testament, the word oinos corresponds to the 
Hebrew word yayin. Stuart says : " In the ISew Tes- 
tament we have oinos, which corresponds exactly to the 
Hebrew yayin." 

As both yayin and oinos are generic words, they desig- 
nate the juice of the grape in all its stages. 

In the Latin we have the word vinum, which the lexi- 
con gives as equivalent to oinos of the Greek, and is ren- 
dered by the English word wine, both being generic. 
Here, then, are four generic words, yayin, oinos, vinum, 
and wine, all expressing the same generic idea, as includ- 
ing all sorts and kinds of the juice of the grape. "Wine 
is generic, just as are the words groceries, hardware, 
merchandise, fruit, grain, and other words. 

Dr. Frederick R. Lees, of England, the author of sev- 
eral learned articles in Kind's Cyclopaedia, in which he 
shows an intimate acquaintance with the ancient lan- 
guages, says: "In Hebrew, Chaldee, Greek, Syriac, 
Arabic, Latin, and English, the words for wine in all 
these languages are originally, and always, and inclu- 
sively r applied to the blood of the grape in its primitive 
and natural condition, as well, subsequently, as to that 
juice both boiled and fermented." 

Dr. Laurie, on the contrary, says : " This word denotes 
intoxicating wine in some places of Scripture ; therefore, 
it denotes the same in all places of Scripture.' 7 This 
not only begs the whole question, but is strange, very 
strange logic. . ¥e find the word which denotes the spirit 
often rendered wind or breath ; shall we, therefore, con- 
clude it always means wind or breath, and, with the Sad- 
ducees, infer that there is neither angel nor spirit, and 
that there can be no resurrection ? So, also, because the 



62 

word translated heaven often means the atmosphere, shall 
we conclude that it always means atmosphere, and that 
there is no such place as a heaven where the redeemed 
will be gathered and where is the throne of God % 

But the misery and delusion are that most readers of 
the Bible, knowing of no other than the present wines 
of commerce, which are intoxicating, leap to the conclu- 
sion, wine is wine all the world over — as the wine of our 
day is inebriating, therefore the wine mentioned in the 
Bible was intoxicating, and there was none other. 

There is a perverse tendency in the human mind to 
limit a generic word to a particular species. 

John Stuart Mill, in his System of Logic, says : " A 
generic term is always liable to become limited to a single 
species if people have occasion to think and speak of that 
species oftener than of anything else contained in the genus. 
The tide of custom first drifts the word on the shore of a 
particular meaning, then retires and leaves it there." 

The truth of this is seen every day in the way in which 
the readers of the Bible limit the generic word wine to one 
of the species under it, and that an intoxicating wine. 

CLASSIFICATION OF TEXTS. 

The careful reader of the Bible will have noticed that 
in a number of cases wine is simply mentioned, without 
anything in the context to determine its character. He 
will have noticed another class, which unmistakably de- 
notes the bad character of the beverage, lie will also 
have noticed a third class, whose character is -"as clearly 
designated as good. 

It would extend this discussion too much to trace out 
all the different ways in which the generic word wine is 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 63 

used. It will suffice to direct attention to the two classes 
which designate their character. 

BAD WINE. 

One class of texts refers to wine : 

1. As the cause of intoxication. This is not disputed. 

2. As the cause of violence- and woe. Prov. iv. 17 : 
" They drink the yayin, wine, of violence." Prov. xxiii. 
29, 30 : " Who hath woe ? Who hath sorrows ? Who 
hath contentions? Who hath babbling? Who hath 
wounds without cause ? Who hath redness of eyes ? They 
that tarry long at the yayin, wine ; they that go to seek 
mixed wine." 

3. As the cause of self-security and irreligion. Isa. 
lvi. 12 : " Come ye, say they, I will fetch yayin, wine, 
and we will fill ourselves with strong drink ; and to-mor- 
row shall be as this day, and much more abundant." Hab. 
ii. 5 : " Yea also, because he transgresseth by yayin, wine, he 
is a proud man, neither keepeth at home, who enlargeth 
his desire as hell, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied." 
Isa. xxviii. 7 : " They also have erred through yayin, wine, 
and through strong drink are out of the way ; the priest 
and the prophet have erred through strong drink ; they 
err in vision, they stumble in judgment." 

4. As poisonous and destructive. Prov. xxiii. 31 : 
" Look not thou upon the yayin, wine, when it is red, 
when it giveth his color in the cup, when it moveth itself 
aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth 
like an adder." Chemists find in this passage an admira- 
ble description of the process of vinous fermentation by 
which alcohol is produced. 

It is worthy of particular notice that it is this kind of 



64 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

wine that men are exhorted and warned not even to look 
upon, much less to drink ; and that because its effects 
will be like the poisonous, deadly bite of a serpent and 
the equally fatal sting of the adder. Dent, xxxii. 33-: 
u Their yayin, wine, is the poison of dragons, and the cruel 
venom of asps." 

The Hebrew word khamah, here rendered poison, oc- 
curs eight times, and is six times translated poison, as in 
Deut. xxxii. 24 : " The poison of serpents ;" xxxii. 23 : 
" Their wine is the poison of dragons ;" Ps. lviii. 4 : 
" Their poison is like the poison of a serpent ;" cxl. 3 : 
" Adders' poison is under their lips ;" Job vi. 4 : " The 
poison whereof drinketh up my spirit." 

Hosea vii. 5 : " Made him sick with bottles of wine " 
(khamath), poison ; margin, " heat through wine." Hab. ii. 
15 : " Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink ; that 
putteth thy bottle to him." The word bottle is rendered 
khamah, which means poison, and is so rendered gene- 
erally ; by a figure, the bottle is put for the poison it con- 
tained. 

Parkhurst defines this word " an inflammatory poison" 
and refers to the rabbins, who have identified it with the 
poisoned cup of malediction. Archbishop Newcome, in 
his translation, says that "khamah is gall poison" St. 
Jerome's Version has gall in one text, and mad in another. 
— Nott, London Ed., F. K. Lees, Appendix A, p. 197. 
Dr. Gill renders the word, " thy gall, thy poison" The 
late Professor Nordheimer, of the Union Theological 
Seminary, New York City, in his Critical Grammar, ,1ms 
" maddening wine." 

Notice the character given to this wine : gall, poison, 
poison of serpents, adders' poison, poison of dragons, 
poison which drinketh up the spirits, maddening wine. 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 65 

How exact the agreement between the declarations of the 
Bible and the teachings of physical truth ! Alcohol is 
certified by thousands of illustrations as poison to the 
human system. 

JSTo wonder that against such wine the Scriptures lift 
up their earnest Warnings, because wine (yayin) is a 
mocker ; because it " biteth like a serpent, and stingeth 
like an adder." 

5. As condemning those who are devoted to drink. Isa. 
v. 22 : " Woe unto them that are mighty to drink (yayin) 
wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink : which 
justify the wicked for reward, and take away the right- 
eousness of the righteous from him ! Therefore as the 
fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the 
chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blos- 
som shall go up as dust : because they have cast away the 
law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the 
Holy One of Israel." 

1 Cor. vi. 10 : " ISTor drunkards shall inherit the king- 
dom of God." 

6. As the emblem of punishment and of eternal ruin. 
Ps. lx. 3 : " Thou hast made us to drink the (yayin) 
wine of astonishment ;" literally, " wine of reeling or 
trembling." The Yulgate reads, " suffering." Ps. Ixxv. 
8 : " Por in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the 
(yayin) wine is red ; it is full of mixture ; and he poureth 
out of the same : but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of 
the earth shall wring them out, and drink them." Isa. 
li. IT: "O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the hand of 
the Lord the cup of his fury ; thou hast drunken the 
dregs of the cup of trembling, find wrung them out ;" 
also, verse 22. Jer. xxv. 15 : " Take the yayin, wine-cup, 
of this fury at my hand." Pev. xvi. 19 : " To give unto 



her tlie cup of the (oinou) wine of the fierceness of his 
wrath." Eev. xiv. 10 : " The same shall drink of the 
(oinou) wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out 
without mixture into the cup of his indignation ; and he 
shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the pres- 
ence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb : 
and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever 
and ever." 

GOOD WINE. 

From this terrible but very imperfect setting forth of 
the testimonies of the Bible in regard to the wine whose 
character is bad, I turn, with a sense of grateful pleasure, 
to another class of texts which speaks with approbation of 
a wine whose character is good, and which is commended 
as a real blessing. 

1. This icine is to he presented at the altar as an offering 
to God. Kuinb. xviii. 12 : " All the best of the oil, and 
all the best of the wine, and of the wheat, the first-fruits 
of them which they shall offer unto the Lord, them have 
I given thee." In this passage, all the best of the wine 
(tirosh) is associated with the best of the oil and of the 
wheat, denoting the most valuable natural productions — 
the direct gift of God. 

That these terms denote the fruit of the soil in their 
natural state, seems probable from the next verse : "And 
whatsoever is first ripe in the land, which they shall bring 
unto the Lord, shall be thine." This was a first fruit- 
offering. It is associated with oil, and flour, and the first- 
fruits ; it is an " offering of wine for a sweet savor — an 
offering made by fire, for a sweet savor unto the Lord." 
'Neh. x. 37 : " Bring the first-fruits of our dough, and our 
offerings, and the fruit of all manner of trees, of (tirosh) 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. Ql 

wine, and of oil," etc. Again, verse 39 : " Bring the 
offering of the corn, of tlie (tirosli) new wine, and the 
oil," etc. From these passages, it is held by some that 
the solid produce of the vineyard was here presented. 
Chap. xiii. 5 : " The tithes of the corn, and (tirosh) 
new wine; and the oil," etc. ; and 13 : " The tithe of the 
corn, and the (tirosh) new wine, and the oil," etc. It is 
hardly to be credited, when in the law (Levit. ii. 11) 
all leaven was forbidden as an offering, that God 
should require a fermented liquor which, of all others, is 
the most direct cause of wretchedness and woe in this 
life, and of eternal ruin in the future, as a religious offer- 
ing; that against the use of which he had uttered his 
most solemn warnings and denunciations. As all the 
other articles offered in worship were in their nature pure 
and harmless — were essential to the comfort and well- 
being of man, it is passing strange that the wine should 
be the one exception. 

2. This wine is classed among the blessings, the com- 
forts, the necessaries of life. When the patriarch Isaac 
blessed his son Jacob (Gen. xxvii. 28), he said : " There- 
fore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness 
of the earth, and plenty of corn, and (tirosh) wine." The 
blessing was on the actual growth of the field — that 
which " the dew and the fatness of the earth produced ;" 
these were the direct gifts of God. 

Of this blessing, Isaac afterwards said to Esau (verse 
37) : " With corn and (tirosh) wine I have sustained him ;" 
that is, I have pledged the divine blessing to secure to 
him and his posterity in plenty the things necessary for 
their best comfort and happiness. Therefore we read, Deut. 
vii. 13 : " And he will love thee, and bless thee, and mul- 
tiply thee ; he will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and 



68 

the fruit of thy land ; thy corn, and thy (tirosh) wine, and 
thine oil ; the increase of thy kine and the flocks of thy 
sheep in the land which he sware nnto thy fathers to give 
thee." The grouping . is very significant : the blessing 
was to rest upon " the fruit of the womb, upon the fruit 
of the land, which is specified ; thy corn, and thy wine, 
and thine oil ; also, the increase of thy kine and flocks of 
sheep." It is the direct and immediate product of the 
land. To secure this, God (Deut. xi. 14) promised: "I 
will give you the rain of your land in his due season, 
the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather 
in thy corn, and thy (tirosh) wine, and thine oil. And I 
will send grass into thy fields, that thou mayest eat and 
be full." Prov. iii. 10 : " So shall thy barns be filled 
with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with (tirosh) 
new wine." 

Albert Barnes, on Isa. xxiv. 7, says : " New wine (ti- 
rosh) denotes properly must, or the wine that was newly 
expressed from the grape and that was not fermented, 
usually translated new wine or sweet wine." 

Isa. Txv. 8 : "As the new wine is found in the cluster, 
and one saith, Destroy it not ; for a blessing is in it." Al- 
bert Barnes says : " The Hebrew word (tirosh) here used 
means properly must, or new wine." On the words " for 
a blessing is in it," he says : " That which is regarded as a 
blessing, that is, wine." He cites Judges ix. 13 in proof: 
" Wine which cheereth God and man (tirosh)." 

Joel iii. 18 : " The mountains shall drop down new wine 
(tirosh), and the hills shall flow with milk ;" i.e., abund- 
ance of blessings. These blessed things are the pure, and 
harmless, and direct products of the land, necessary for 
the comfort and happiness of man. Is intoxicating wine, 
which is the emblem of God's wrath and of eternal ruin, 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 69 

among the things blessed? Still further (Ps. civ. 14, 
15) : " He canseth the grass to grow for the cattle, and 
herb for the service of man : that he may bring forth food 
out of the earth ; and wine (yayin) that maketh glad the 
heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread 
which strengtheneth man's heart." Again, we read 
(Judges ix. 13) : " And the vine said, Should I leave my 
(tirosh) wine, which cheereth the heart of God and man V 

Obviously, God can only be cheered or pleased with the 
fruit of the vine as the product of his own power and the 
gift of his goodness, and man is cheered with it when he 
sees the ripening clusters, and when he partakes thereof. 

There is a strange impression, very current in our day, 
that nothing can cheer and exhilarate but alcoholic 
drinks. Is it not written, Zecli. ix. 7, " Corn shall 
make the young men cheerful, and new wine (tirosh) the 
maids "? In referring to the nutritious qualities of the corn 
and wine, the prophet assigns the corn to the young men, 
and the new wine, tirosh, to the maidens. Here the new 
wine, the must, or unfermented juice, is approbated. Ps. 
iv. 7 : " Thou hast put gladness " (the same word which is 
translated cheereth in Judges ix. 13) "in my heart, more 
than in the time that their corn and (tirosh) wine in- 
creased." 

We all know that the weary, hungry man is cheered 
with meat. As soon as the nerves of the stomach are ex- 
cited by food, a sensation of refreshment, of warmth, and 
of cheer is felt. The woman who, all day long, has bent 
over the wash-tub and exhausted her strength, sits down 
at the close of the day to her cup of tea — 

" The cup that cheers, but not inebriates " — 
with her frugal meal of bread, and, peradventure, of 



70 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

meat, and rises up refreshed, cheerful, and strong. We 
all know that good news is cheering, animating, exhilarat- 
ing. So, also, is cold water ; for thus, saith the Proverb 
xxv. 25 : "As cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good 
news from a far country." Water, with its cheering 
power, was the proper illustration. 

3. This wine is the emblem of spiritual blessings. Isa. 
lv. 1 : " Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye fco the waters, 
and he that hath no money ; come ye, buy, and eat ; yea, 
come, buy wine (yayin) and milk without money and with- 
out price." Here the prophet, in the name of God, invites 
all, every one, to take this wine and milk freely and 
abundantly. How incongruous to say, Buy milk, and 
drink abundantly of it, for it is innocent and nutritious, 
and will do you good ; and then to say, Come, buy wine 
(yayin), an intoxicating beverage, which, if you drink 
habitually and liberally, will beget the drunkard's appe- 
tite, and shut you out of heaven ! Can it be that God 
makes the intoxicating wine the emblem of those spirit- 
ual blessings which ensure peace and prosperity in this 
life, and prepares the recipient for blessedness hereafter ? 
There is harmony between milk and unfermeated wine 
as harmless and nutritious, and they properly stand as the 
symbols of spiritual mercies. With this view agree the 
other scriptures cited: Ps. civ. 15: "Wine (yayin) that 
maketh glad the heart of man ;" Judges ix. 13 : " Wine 
(tirosh) which cheereth God and man ;" Cant. vii. 9 : 
" Best wine for my beloved ;" Prov. ix. 2 : " Wisdom hath 
mingled her wine (yaynah). Come, eat of my bread, and 
drink of the wine (yayin) I have mingled ;" Cant. v. 1 : 
" I have drunk my wine (yayin) with milk : eat, O friends ; 
drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved." 

Such is the invitation to drink abundantly, because 



i 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 11 

spiritual blessings never injure, but always do good to 
the recipient. 

4. This wine is the emblem of the blood of the atonement, 
by which is the forgiveness of sins and eternal blessed- 
ness. In the institution of the Lord's Supper, as recorded 
by Matt. xxvi. 26-28 and Mark xiv. 22-24, Christ " took 
the cup, and gave thanks," saying, " This is my blood of 
the New Testament," "shed for the remission of sins." 
The bread and the wine are here united, as in other scrip- 
tures, as blessings, but in this case as emblems of the 
most wonderful manifestation of the divine love to man. 
Paul, 1 Cor. x. 16 : " The cup of blessings which we 
bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ V 
At the close, Christ said, " I will not drink henceforth of 
this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new 
with you in my Father's kingdom." Thus the cup is asso- 
ciated with the eternal blessedness of the heavenly world. 
See further comments on Matt. xxvi. 26. 

In all the passages where good wine is named, there is 
no lisp of warning, no intimations of danger, no hint of 
disapprobation, but always of decided approval. 

How bold and strongly marked is the contrast : 

The one the cause of intoxication, of violence, and of 
woes. 

The other the occasion of comfort and of peace. 

The one the cause of irreligion and of self-destruction. 

The other the devout offering of piety on the altar of 
God. 

The one the symbol of the divine wrath. 

The other the symbol of spiritual blessings. 

The one the emblem of eternal damnation. 

The other the emblem of eternal salvation. 

" The distinction in quality between the good and the 



72 



bad wine is as clear as that between good and bad men, 
or good and bad wives, or good and bad spirits ; for one 
is the constant subject of warning, designated poison lit-* 
erallj, analogically, and figuratively, while the other is 
commended as refreshing and innocent, which no alcoholic 
wine is." — Lees' Appendix, p. 232. 

Can it be that these blessings and curses refer to the 
same beverage, and that an intoxicating liquor? Does 
the trumpet give a certain or an uncertain sound ? Says 
Rev. Dr. J^ott : " Can the same thing, in the same state, 
be good and bad ; a symbol of wrath, and a symbol of 
mercy ; a thing to be sought after, and a thing to be 
avoided ? Certainly not. And is the Bible, then, incon- 
sistent with itself? No, certainly." — JVott, London Ed. 
p. 48. 

Professor M. Stuart, p. 49, says : " My final conclusion 
is this, viz., that whenever the Scriptures speak of wine 
as a comfort, a blessing, or a libation to God, and rank it 
with such articles as corn and oil, they mean, they can 
mean only such wine as contained no alcohol that could 
have a mischievous tendency / that wherever they de- 
nounce it, and connect it with drunkenness and revel- 
ling, they can mean only alcoholic or intoxicating wine." 

But the position of the advocates of only one kind of 
wine is that "the juice of the giape, when called wine, 
was always fermented, and, being fermented, was always 
intoxicating ;" " that fermentation is the essence of wine." 
One exception will destroy the universality of this sweep- 
ing statement. 

THE WINE OF EGYPT. 

Gen. xl. 11 : "I took the grapes, and pressed them into 
Pharaoh's cup, and I gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand." 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 



73 



To break the force of this, it is pleaded that it was only a 
dream. But a dream designed to certify an immediate 
coming event could only be intelligible and pertinent by 
representing an existing usage. 

A singular proof of the ancient usage of squeezing the 




juice of grapes into a cup has been exhumed at Pompeii." 
It is that of Bacchus standing by a pedestal, and holding 



74 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

in both hands a large cluster of grapes, and squeezing the 
juice into a cup. 

" Plutarch affirms that before the time of Psaminetiehus, 
who lived six hundred years before Christ, the Egyptians 
neither drank fermented wine nor offered it in sacrifice." 
—JVoU, Third Lecture. 

" In remote antiquity, grapes were brought to the table, 
and the juice there expressed for immediate use." — Nott, 
London Ed. p. 58. 

" Josephus' version of the butler's speech is as follows : 
He said ' that by the king's permission he pressed the 
grapes into a goblet, and, having strained the sweet 
wine, he gave it to the king to drink, and that he 
received it graciously." Josephus here uses gleukos 
to designate the expressed juice of the grape before fer- 
mentation could possibly commence." — Bible Commen- 
tary, p. 18. 

Bishop Lowth of England, in his Commentary on Isaiah, 
in 1778, remarking upon Isa. v. 2„ refers to the case of 
Pharaoh's butler, and says, " By which it would seem that 
the Egyptians drank only the fresh juice pressed from the 
grapes, which was called oinos ampilinos, i.e., wine of 
the vineyards." 

Rev. Dr. Adam Clark, on Gen. xl. 11, says : " From this 
we find that wine anciently was the mere expressed juice 
of the grape without fermentation. The saky, or cup- 
bearer, took the bunch, pressed the juice into the cup, and 
instantly delivered it into the hands of his master. This 
was anciently the yayin [wine] of the Hebrews, the oinos 
[wine] of the Greeks, and the mustum [new fresh wine] 
of the ancient Latins." Baxter's Comprehensive Bible 
quotes Dr. Clark with approbation. 

" It appears that the Mohammedans of Arabia press 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 75 

the juice of the grape into a cup, and drink it as Pharaoh 
did."— JSTott, London Ed. p. 59. 
Milton says of Eve : 

" For drink the grape she crushed — inoffensive must." 

So also Gray : 

" Scent the new fragrance of the breathing rose, 
And quaff the pendent vintage as it grows." 

JVbtt, 59. 

NEW WINE AND OLD BOTTLES. 

The first occasion, following the order of the Gospels, on 
which Christ speaks of wine, he says (Matt. ix. 17) : 
"Neither do men put new wine into old bottles," etc. 
A similar statement is also made by Mark ii. 22 and 
Luke v. 37. 

Our Lord here refers to a well-known custom, in his 
day, in relation to the keeping of wine. Notice the facts. 
They did not put (oinos neos) new wine — the juice fresh 
from the press — into old bottles, then made of the skins 
of goats, and the reason is given, " Else the bottles break, 
and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish." But 
it was the custom to put the new wine into new bottles, 
and the reason is given, " That both the wine and the bot- 
tles are thus preserved." 

The explanation which the advocates of but one kind 
of wine give is that new bags were used in order to resist 
the expansive force of the carbonic acid gas generated by 
fermentation. This explanation necessarily admits that 
the new wine had not yet fermented ; for, if it had been 
fermented, the old bottles would suit just as well as the 
new ; but the new, it is pleaded, were required to resist 



1G THE LAWS OF FEFvMEZN'TATIOX, AND 

the force of fermentation. They tlms concede that the 
new wine had not yet fermented. 

Chambers, in his Cyclqpcedta, says : " The force of fer- 
menting wine is very great, being able, if closely stopped 
up, to burst through the strongest cask." What chance 
would a goat-skin have ? 

I have said, if the "new wine " had already fermented, 
the old bottles would suit just as well as the new ; but, if 
not fermented, the old would not suit, not because they 
were weak, but because they would have portions of the 
albuminous matter or yeast adhering to the sides. This, 
having absorbed oxygen from the air, would become active 
fermenting matter, and would communicate it to the en- 
tire mass. 

Liebig informs us that "fermentation depends upon the 
access of air to the grape-juice, the gluten of which ab- 
sorbs oxygen and becomes ferment, communicating its own 
decomposition to the saccharine matter of the grapes." — 
Kitto, ii. 955. 

The new bottles or skins, being clean and perfectly free 
from all ferment, were essential for preserving the fresh 
unfermented juice, not that their strength might resist 
the force of fermentation, but, being clean and free from 
fermenting matter, and closely tied and sealed, so as to 
exclude the air, the wine would be preserved in the same 
state in which it was when put into those skins. . 

Columella, who lived in the days of the Apostles, in his 
receipt for keeping the wine " always sweet" expressly 
directs that the newest must, be put in a "new amphora" 
or jar. 

Smith, in his Greek and Roman Antiquities, says: 
" When it was desired to preserve a quantity in the sweet 
state, an amphora was taken and coated with pitch vjithin 



THE WINES OP THE ANCIENTS. 1*1 

and without • it was filled with the mustum lixivium, and 
corked, so as to be perfectly air-tight." 

The facts stated by Christ are in perfect keeping with 
the practice prevailing in his day to prevent the pure 
juice of the grape from fermenting. The new amphora — 
the amphora coated with pitch within and without — and 
the new bottles, all have reference to the same custom. 
The people of Palestine must have been familiar with this 
custom, or Christ would not have used it as an illustra- 
tion. This passage, properly viewed in connection with 
the usages of the day, goes a great way toward establish- 
ing the fact that Christ and the people of Palestine recog- 
nized the existence of two kinds of wine — the fermented 
and the unfermented. 

This passage also helps us to understand the character 
of the wine Christ used, which he made for the wedding 
at Cana, and which he selected as the symbol of his 
atoning blood. 

CHRIST EATING AND DRINKING. 

Matt. xi. 18, 19 : " John came neither eating nor drink- 
ing, and they say, He hath a devil. The Son of man came 
eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man glutton- 
ous, and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. 
But wisdom is justified of her children." The Saviour, 
in the verses immediately preceding, illustrated the cap- 
tiousness and unreasonableness of those who were deter- 
mined not to be pleased, but under all circumstances to 
find fault. " Whereunto shall I liken this generation ? It 
is like unto children sitting in the markets and calling 
unto their fellows, and saying, We have piped unto you, 
and ye have not danced ; we have mourned unto you, and 



18 

ye have not lamented." Christ directly applies this illus- 
tration by reference to the estimate placed upon John and 
himself by that generation. 

John was a Nazarite, and conformed rigidly to the re- 
quirements of that order. When they noticed his austere 
abstinence, peculiar habits, rough attire, and uncompro- 
mising denunciations, they were not pleased, and dis- 
missed him with the remark, " He hath a devil." When 
they saw Christ, whose mission was different from that of 
John, and perceived that he practised no austerities, but 
lived like other men, and mingled socially with even the 
despised of men, they were no better pleased, and said, 
" Behold a man gluttonous, and a wine-bibber, a friend of 
publicans and sinners." It is on such authority that the 
advocates of alcoholic wines claim that Christ was accus- 
tomed to use them. At best, it is only inferential, because 
he ate and drank, and was " a friend of publicans and sin- 
ners," that he therefore necessarily drank intoxicating 
wine. We notice that the same authority which said he 
was a " wine-bibber " also said he was " gluttonous." And 
on two other occasions (John i. 20, viii. 48) they said he 
had a devil. If we believe the first charge on the author- 
ity of his enemies, we must also believe the second and the 
third, for the authority is the same. It will be borne in 
mind that these, his enemies, traduced his character that 
they might destroy his influence. They judged that the 
charge of wine-bibbing, whether it implied drunkenness or 
sensuality, was the most damaging to his influence as a 
religious teacher and reformer. It should also be remem- 
bered that his enemies were unscrupulous, malignant, and 
not noted for their truthfulness. 

Dr. John J. Owen, in his Commentary, says : " As wine 
was a common beverage in that land of vineyards, in its 



THE WINES OP THE ANCIENTS. 19 

unfermented state, our Lord most likely drank it." The 
Saviour did not turn aside from his work to clear himself 
from the charges which malignity and falsehood brought 
against him. He simply said, " Wisdom is justified of 
her children ;" that is, My work and my character will 
ultimately shield me from the power of all false accusa- 
tions. Those who know me will not be affected by them, 
and those who hate me will not cease from their calumny. 

Matt. xxi. 33 : " Vineyard and wine-press." Neither of 
these determine anything of the character of the wine 
which was made. It is begging the question to say that 
all was fermented, especially as the quotations from an- 
cient authors show that there were two kinds — the fer- 
mented and the unfermented. 

Matt. xxiv. 38 : " Eating and drinking." These terms 
denote hilarious, thoughtless, and, perhaps, excessive dis- 
sipation. Admit that what they drank was intoxicating, 
it only proves, what no one denies, that there were inebri- 
ating drinks, but does not and cannot prove there were 
no others. 

Matt. xxiv. 49 : " Eat and drink with the drunken." 
This states a fact which we admit, and is proof that there 
were then intoxicating liquors, and that some men then 
used them. 

THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

Matt. xxvi. 26, 27. Having finished the Passover, our 
Lord " took bread," unleavened, unfermented bread, and 
blessed it. This was done always at the Passover, and was 
by Christ transferred to the Supper. He gave it to his 
disciples as the symbol of his body. Then he took the 
cup, and gave thanks. This also was done on giving the 



80 THE LAWS OF FEEMENTATION, AM) 

third cup at the Passover. This lie also transferred, and 
gave it to his disciples as the symbol of his blood, " shed 
for the remission of sins." The bread and the cup were 
used with no discrimination as to their character. To be 
in harmony with the bread, the cup should also have been 
unfermented. It was the Passover bread and wine that 
Christ used. In Ex. xii. 8, 15, 17-20, 34, 39, and other 
places, all leaven is forbidden at that feast and for seven 
days. The prohibition against the presence and use of 
all fermented articles was under the penalty of being " cut 
off from Israel." " The law forbade seor — yeast, ferment, 
whatever could excite fermentation — and Tchahmatz, 
whatever had undergone fermentation, or been subject to 
the action of seor" — Bible Com?nenta?y, p. 280. 

Professor Moses Stuart, p. 16, says : " The Hebrew 
word khahmatz means anything fermented." P. 20 : " All 
leaven, i.e. fermentation, was excluded from offerings to 
God.— Levit. ii. 3-14." 

" The great mass of the Jews have ever understood this 
prohibition as extending to fermented wine, or strong 
drink, as well as to bread. The word is essentially the 
same which designates the fermentation of bread and that 
of liquors." 

Gesenius, the eminent Hebraist, says that " leaven ap- 
plied to the wine as really as to the bread." — Thayer, 
p. 71. 

The Rev. A. P. Peabody, D.D., in his essay on the Lord's 
Supper, says : " The writer has satisfied himself, by care- 
ful research, that in our Saviour's time the Jews, at least 
the high ritualists among them, extended the prohibition 
of leaven to the jrrineiple of fermentation in every form', 
and that it was customary, at the Passover festival, for the 
master of the household to press the contents of ' the cup \ 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 81 

from clusters of grapes preserved for this special pur- 
pose" — Monthly Review, Jan., 1870, p. 41. 

" Fermentation is nothing else but the putrefaction of 
a substance containing no nitrogen. Ferment, or yeast, is 
a substance in a state of putrefaction, the atoms of which 
are in continual motion {Turner's Chemistry, by Liebig)" 
—Kitto, ii. 236. 

Leaven, because it was corruption, was forbidden as an 
offering to God. Ex. xxxiv. 25 : " Thou shalt not offer 
the blood of my sacrifice with leaven." But salt, because 
it prevents corruption and preserves, is required. Levit. 
ii. 13 : "With all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt." If 
leaven was not allowed with the sacrifices, which were 
the types of the atoning blood of Christ, how much more 
would it be a violation of the commandment to allow 
leaven, or that which was fermented, to be the symbol of 
the blood of atonement ? We cannot imagine that our 
Lord, in disregard of so positive a command, would ad- 
mit leaven into the element which was to perpetuate the 
memory of the sacrifice of himself, of which all the other 
sacrifices were but types. 

Our Lord blessed the bread, and for the cup he gave 
thanks. Each element alike was the occasion of devout 
blessing and thanksgiving. This cup contained that which 
the Saviour, just about to suffer, could bless, and which 
he, for all time, designated as the symbol of his own aton- 
ing blood. 

Having finished the Supper, in parting with his disci- 
ples he said, " I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of 
the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in 
my Father's kingdom." 

The Saviour does not use oinos, the usual word for 
wine, but adopts the phrase "genneematos tees ampelou," 



82 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

"this fruit of the vine." Was it because oinos was a 
generic word, including the juice of the grape in all its 
stages, that he chose a more specific phrase ? Was it be- 
cause he had previously selected the vine as the illustra- 
tion of himself as the true vine, and his disciples as the 
fruit-bearing branches, and the juice as " the pure blood 
of the grape " ? (Deut. xxxii. 14.). 

By " this fruit of the vine," did he intimate that " in 
his Father's kingdom " there was something to be looked 
for there answering to intoxicating wine ? This cannot 
be tolerated for a moment. By " this fruit of the vine," 
did he mean inebriating wine ? Dr. Laurie, Bibliotheca 
Sacra, June, 1869, says, " The Bible never requires the use 
of wine (intoxicating) except at the communion-table, or 
as a medicine prescribed by another than the party who is 
to use it." This is emphatic, and promptly answers the 
question in the affirmative. It is strange, very strange, 
that our Lord should require his disciples perpetually to 
use, as a religious duty, at his table, the article which Dr. 
Laurie says " all good men agree is dangerous, and not to 
be used except as a medicine prescribed by another." 
Does Christ, who has taught us to pray " lead us not into 
temptation," thus require his disciples to use habitually, 
in remembrance of him, an article too dangerous to be 
used anywhere else ? 

The fact that the Passover was six months later than 
the vintage is not an invincible objection, since, as we 
have seen in the preceding pages, on the authority of Jo- 
sephus, of travellers Niebuhr and Swinburne, and of 
Peppini, the wine-merchant of Florence, and others, that 
grapes are preserved fresh through the year, and that wine 
may be made from them at any period. 

Is it probable that Christ took an intoxicating liquor, 



THE WINES OP THE ANCIENTS. 83 

which in all the ages past had been the cause of misery 
and ruin, and which in all the ages to come would destroy 
myriads in temporal and eternal destruction ; that he took 
the wine which his own inspired Word declared was " the 
poison of asps," " the poison of serpents," " the poison of 
dragons," whose deadly bite is like a serpent, and whose 
fatal sting is like an adder, and made that the symbol of 
his atonement, saying, " This is the New Testament in my 
blood " ? But, in " the fruit of the vine," pure, unfer- 
mented, healthful, and life-sustaining, and. which the Scrip- 
tures called " the blood of the grape" and "the pure 
blood of the grape," there was harmony and force in 
making it the symbol of atoning blood by which we have 
spiritual life and eternal blessedness. 

The Apostle Paul, 1 Cor. x. 15, not only avoids the 
word oinos (wine), but calls the liquor used " the cup of 
blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the 
blood of Christ ?" And in xi. 25 he quotes the exact 
words of Christ, " This cup is the New Testament in my 
blood." 

Clement, of Alexandria, a.d. 180, designates the liquid 
used by Christ as "the Mood of the vme" — Kitto, ii. 801. 

Thomas Aquinas says, " Grape-juice has the specific qual- 
ity of wine, and, therefore, this sacrament may be cele- 
brated with grape-juice." — JSTott, London Ed. p. 94, note. 

Mark ii. 22 : " New wine in new bottles." See Matt. 
ix. 17. 

Mark xii. 1 : Vineyard, wine-fat. See Matt. xxi. 33. 

Mark xiv. 23-25 : Lord's Supper. See Matt. xxvi. 26. 

Mark xv. 23 : " Wine mingled with myrrh." This is 
a specially prepared article, and not the pure juice of the 
grape. This Christ refused. 

Luke i. 15: "Drink neither wine nor strong drink." 



84 THE LAWS OE EEEMENTATIOJS", AND 

This had reference to John as a Nazarite, and, so far as 
it is applicable to the case in hand, favors total abstinence 
as favorable to physical and spiritual strength. 

Luke v. 37-39 : " New wine in new bottles." See 
Matt. ix. 17. 

Luke vii. 33-35: John the Baptist. See Matt. xi. 
18, 19. 

Luke x. 7 : " Eating and drinking " This direction to 
his disciples is simply to take of the ordinary hospitality. 
Only by violent construction can it imply that alcoholic 
were the only drinks offered them. 

Luke x. 34 : " Pouring in oil and wine." This was an 
external and medicinal application. The mixture of the 
two formed a healing ointment. Pliny mentions " oleum 
gleucinum, which was compounded of oil and gleucus 
(sweet wine), as an excellent ointment for wounds." " Co- 
lumella gives the receipt for making it." — Bible Commen- 
tary, p. 297. 

Luke xii. 19 : " Eat, drink, and be merry." This is the 
language of a sensualist, and is used by Christ to illus- 
trate not the propriety of drinking usages, but that covet- 
ousness is living to self. 

Luke xii. 45 : " Eat, drink, and be drunken." See 
Matt. xxiv. 49. 

Luke xvii. 27, 28 : " Drank," etc. See Matt. xxiv. 38. 

Luke xx. 9 : Planted vineyard. See Matt. xxi. 33 ; 

Luke xxi. 34 : " Surfeiting and drunkenness," literally, in 
debauch and drunkenness. Pobinson, " properly, seizure 
of the head: hence intoxication." 

Christ here warns equally against being " overcharged 
with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life." 
This text decides nothing in respect to wine which would 
not intoxicate, but warns against the drinks that would. 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. , 85 

Nor does it bear upon the propriety of moderate drink- 
ing. 

WEDDING-WINE AT CANA. 

John ii. 1-11 : The distinguishing fact is that Christ 
turned the water into wine. The Greek word is oinos / 
and it is claimed that therefore the wine was alcoholic 
and intoxicating. But as oinos is a generic word, and, as 
such, includes all kinds of wine and all stages of the juice 
of the grape, and sometimes the clusters and even the vine, 
it is begging the whole question to assert that it was in- 
toxicating. As the narrative is silent on this point, the 
character of the wine can only be determined by the at- 
tendant circumstances — by the occasion, the material 
used, the person making the wine, and the moral influence 
of the miracle. 

The occasion was a wedding convocation . The material 
was water — the same element which the clouds pour down, 
which the vine draws up from the earth by its roots, and 
in its passage to the clusters changes into juice. The 
operator was Jesus Christ, the same who, in the begin- 
ning, fixed that law by which the vine takes up water and 
converts it into pure, unfermented juice. 

The wine provided by the family was used up, and the 
mother of Jesus informed him of that fact. He directed 
that the six water-pots be filled with water. This being 
done, he commanded to draw and hand it to the master 
of the feast. He pronounced it wine — good wine. 

The moral influence of the miracle will be determined 
by the character of the wine. It is pertinent to ask, Is it 
not derogatory to the character of Christ and the teach- 
ings of the Bible to suppose that he exerted his miracu- 



86 * THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AST) 

lous power to produce, according to Alvord, 126, and 
according to Smith, at least 60 gallons of intoxicating 
wine? — wine which inspiration had denounced as "a 
mocker," as " biting like a serpent," and " stinging like 
an adder," as "the poison of dragons," "the cruel venom 
of asps," and which the Holy Ghost had selected as the 
emblem of the wrath of God Almighty? Is it proba- 
ble that he gave that to the guests after they had used the 
wine provided by the host, and which, it is claimed, was 
intoxicating ? 

But wherein was the miracle f We read in Matt. xv. 34 
that Christ fed four thousand persons, and in Mark vi. 
38 that he fed five thousand persons, in each case upon a 
few loaves and fishes, taking up seven and twelve baskets 
of fragments. In these cases, Christ did instantly what, 
by the laws of nature which he had ordained, it would 
have taken months to grow and ripen into wheat. So in 
the case of the wine, Christ, by supernatural and super- 
human rapidity, produced that marvellous conversion of 
water into the " pure blood of the grape " which, by his 
own established law of nature, takes place annually 
through a series of months, as the vine draws up the 
water from the earth, and transmutes it into the pure and 
unfermented juice found in the rich, ripe clusters on the 
vine. 

In Ps. civ. 14, 15, we read : " That he may bring forth 
food out of the earth, and wine that maketh glad the 
heart of man." Here the juice of the grape which is 
produced out of the earth is called wine. This wine was 
made by the direct law of God — that law by which the 
vine draws water from the earth and transmutes it into 
pure juice in the clusters. 

I am happy to state that this is not a modern interpre- 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 87 

tation, forced out by the pressure of the wine question, 
but was also entertained by the early fathers. 

St. Augustine, born a.d. 354, thus explains this mira- 
cle : " For he on that marriage-day made wine in the six 
jars which he ordered to be filled with water — he who 
now makes it every year in the vines ; for, as what the 
servants had poured into the water-jars was turned into 
wine by the power of the Lord, so, also, that which the 
clouds pour forth is turned into wine by the power of the 
self-same Lord. But we cease to wonder at what is done 
every year; its very frequency makes astonishment to 
fail." — Bible Commentary, p. 305. 

Chrysostom, born a.d. 344, says : " Now, indeed, mak- 
ing plain that it is he who changes into wine the water 
in the vines and the rain drawn up by the roots. He 
produced instantly at the wedding-feast that which is 
formed in the plant during a long course of time." — Bible 
Commentary, p. 305. 

Dr. Joseph Hall, Bishop of Norwich, England, in 
1600, says : " What doeth he in the ordinary way of na- 
ture but turn the watery juice that arises up from the 
root into wine ? He will only do this, now suddenly and 
at once, which he does usually by sensible degrees." — 
Bible Commentary, p. 305. 

The critical Dr. Trench, now Archbishop of Dublin, 
says : " He who each year prepares the wine in the grape, 
causing it to drink up and swell with the moisture of 
earth and heaven, to transmute this into its own nobler 
juices, concentrated all those slower processes now into 
the act of a single moment, and accomplished in an in- 
stant what ordinarily he does not accomplish but in 
months."— Bible Commentary, p. 305. 

We have the highest authority that alcohol is not found 



88 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

in any living thing, and is not a process of life. Sir Hum- 
phry Davy says of alcohol : " It has never been fonnd 
ready formed in plants." 

Count Chaptal, the eminent French chemist, says: 
" Nature never forms spirituous liquors ; she rots the 
grape upon the branch, but it is art which converts the 
juice into (alcoholic) wine." 

Dr. Henry Monroe, in his Lecture on Medical Juris- 
prudence, says : " Alcohol is nowhere to be found in any 
product of nature ; was never created by God ; but is es- 
sentially an artificial thing prepared by man through the 
destructive process of fermentation." 

Professor Liebig says : " It is contrary to all sober rules 
of research to regard the vital process of an animal or a 
plant as the cause of fermentation. The opinion that 
they take any share in the morbid process must be rejected 
as an hypothesis destitute of all support. In all fungi, 
analysis has detected the presence of sugar, which during 
the vital process is not resolved into alcohol and carbonic 
acid, but after their death. It is the very reverse of 
the vital process to which this effect must be ascribed. 
Fermentation, putrefaction, and decay are processes of 
decomposition." See notes on 1 Tim. iv. 4. 

Can it be seriously entertained that Christ should, by 
his miraculous power, make alcohol, an article abundantly 
proved not to be found in all the ranges of his creation ? 
Can it be believed that he, by making alcohol, sanctions 
the making of it and the giving of it to his creatures, 
when he, better than all others, knew that it, in the past, 
had been the cause of the temporal and eternal ruin of 
myriads, and which, in all the ages to come, would plunge 
myriads upon myriads into the depths of eternal damna- 
tion? 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 89 

The Rev. Dr. Jacobus says : " All who know of the 
wines then used, well understand the unfermented juice 
of the grape. The present wines of Jerusalem and Leba- 
non, as we tasted them, were commonly boiled and sweet, 
without intoxicating qualities, such as we here get in 
liquors called wines. The boiling prevents fermentation. 
Those were esteemed the best wines which were least 
strong." — Comments on John ii. 1-11. 

This festive occasion furnishes no sanction for the use 
of the alcoholic wines of commerce at weddings at the 
present time, much less for the use of them on other oc- 
casions. 

Acts ii. 13 : " Others mocking said, These men are full 
of new wine." 

To account for the strange fact that unlettered Galile- 
ans, without previous study, could speak a multitude of 
languages, the mockers implied they were drunk, and 
that it was caused by new wine (gleukos). Here 
are two improbabilities. The first is, that drinking 
alcoholic wine could teach men languages. We know 
that such wines make men talkative and garrulous ; and we 
also know that their talk is very silly and offensive. In 
all the ages, and with the intensest desire to discover a 
royal way to knowledge, no one but these mockers has 
hit upon alcohol as an immediate and successful teacher 
of languages. 

The second improbability is, that gleukos, new wine, 
would intoxicate. This is the only place in the New Tes 
tament where this word occurs. Donnegan's Lexicon 
renders gleukos, "new, unfermented wine — must." From 
" gluktis, sweet, agreeable to the taste ; " where oinos is 
understood, " sweet wine made by boiling grapes." 

Dr. E. Robinson, quoting classical authorities, defines 



90 



AND 



gleukos, "must — grape-juice unfermented ;" but, seem- 
ingly with no other authority than the mockers, adds: 
"Acts ii. 13: Sweet wine, fermented and intoxicat- 
ing." 

Dr. S. T. Bloomfield says : " Gleukos, not new-made 
wine, which is the proper signification of the word (for 
that is forbidden by the time of the year) ; but new, i.e. 
sweet wine, which is very intoxicating." 

Rev. T. S. Green's Lexicon, gleukos, " the unfermented 
•juice of the grape, must ; hence, sweet new wine. Acts 
ii. 13. From glukus, sweet. Jas. iii. 11, 12; Rom. x. 
9, 10." 

Science teaches that, when by fermentation the sugar is 
turned into alcohol, the sweetness of the juice is gone. 
Thus, sweet means, as the lexicons state, unfermented 
wine. 

Kitto, ii. 955, says : " Gleukos, must, in common usage, 
sweet or new wine. It only occurs once in the JSTew Tes- 
tament (Acts ii. 13). Josephus applies the term to the 
wine represented as being pressed out of the bunch of 
grapes by the Areki-oino-choos into the cup of the royal 
Pharaoh." Professor C. Anthon says : " The sweet, un- 
fermented juice of the grape is termed gleukos." 

Smith, in his Greek and Roman Antiquities, says, 
" The sweet, unfermented juice of the grape was termed 
glukos by the Greeks, and mustum by the Romans ; the 
latter word being properly an adjective, signifying new 
or fresh." 

Rev. Albert Barnes, on Acts ii. 13, remarks : " New 
wine {glukos) — this word properly means the juice of 
the grape which distils before a pressure is applied, and 
called must. It was sweet wine, and hence the word in 
Greek meaning sweet was given to it. The ancients, it 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 91 

is said, had the art of preserving their new wine, with 
the peculiar flavor before fermentation, for a consider- 
able time, and were in the habit of drinking it in the 
morning." 

Dr. William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible , article 
Wine, says, " A certain amount of jnice exuded from the 
ripe fruit before the treading commenced. This appears 
to have been kept separate from the rest of the juice, and 
to have formed the sweet wine (glukos, new wine) noticed 
in Acts ii. 13." " The wine was sometimes preserved in 
its unfermented state, and drunk as must." 

It was, indeed, the most consummate irony and ef- 
frontery for those mockers to say that the apostles were 
drunk on gleuleos, new wine, and full as reliable was the 
statement that, being thus drunk, they could intelligently 
and coherently speak in a number of languages of which, 
up to that day, they had been ignorant. Peter denies 
the charge, and fortifies his denial by the fact that it was 
only the third hour of the day, answering to our nine a.m. 
This was the hour for the morning sacrifice. It was not 
usual for men to be drunk thus early (1 Thess. v. 7). It 
was a well-known practice of the Jews not to eat or 
drink until after the third hour of the day. As distilled 
spirits were not known until the ninth century, it was 
altogether an improbable thing that they could have 
thus early been drunk on the weak wines of Palestine. 
As the evidence, both ancient and modern, is that gleukos, 
new wine, was unfermented, and therefore not intoxicat- 
ing, this passage testifies in favor of two kinds of wine. 

Acts xxiv. 25, " Reasoned of temperance." " The Eng- 
lish word temperance" says Bib. Com., p. 317, " is 
derived directly from the Latin temperantia, the root 
of which is found in the Greek temo, temno, tempo, to 



92 • 

cut off. Hence temperantia (temperance), as a virtue, is 
the cutting-off of that which ought not to be retained — 
self-restraint from, not in, the use of whatever is perni- 
cious, useless, or dangerous." There is nothing in this 
text, or its surroundings, which intimates that Paul aimed 
to persuade Felix to become a moderate drinker. The case 
was more urgent and momentous. This Roman gov- 
ernor of Judea was a licentious man, then living in open 
adultery ; he was an unjust magistrate, and reckless of 
all retribution except that of Csesar. Paul, therefore, 
so probed his conscience with his reasonings upon right- 
eousness, self-control, and responsibility to God, his Cre- 
ator and final Judge, that he trembled. 

Pom. xiii. 13, " Drunkenness." The Greek word meihee 
means drunkenness. This was common in Pome, and 
Paul wisely exhorted the Christians there to avoid it. 
There is, it will be noticed, the same prohibition of riot- 
ing, chambering, and wantonness, as of drunkenness. 
The argument which uses this text in favor of moderate 
drinking is equally good in favor of moderate rioting, 
and chambering, and wantonness, and strife, and envy- 
ings. All agree that in these total abstinence is the only 
safe and Christian course, and why not equally so in the 
matter of drunkenness? The best and surest way to 
avoid drunkenness is to have nothing to do with alco- 
holic drinks, which produces it, especially as all drunk- 
ards are only made out of moderate drinkers. 

STUMBLING-BLOCKS. 

Pom. xiv. 13, " But judge this rather, that no man put 
a stumbling-block, or an occasion to fall, in his brother's 
way." Two words demand examination. 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 93 

1. Proskomma, which Donnegan renders, "Stumble, 
a trip or false step, an obstacle, an impediment ; in gene- 
ral, a hindrance." — New Testament Lexicon. Metaphor- 
ically, "stumbling-block, an occasion of sinning, means 
of inducing to sin." — Rom. xiv. 13 and 1 Cor. viii. 9. 

2. Skandalon. Donnegan, " Cause of offence or scan- 
dal." — New Testament Lexicon. " Cause or occasion of 
sinning." 

In the context, Paul dissuades from judging one 
another concerning clean and unclean meats (verses 3 and 
14), as a matter of comparatively small moment. But he 
urges, as a most momentous matter, that Christians should 
so regulate all their conduct, socially and religiously, as 
not to put a stumbling-block, or an occasion to fall, in the 
way of his brother. Thus he establishes a principle of 
action universally binding in all ages and under all cir- 
cumstances. This compels every Christian disciple pray- 
erfully to ponder this question, Do the social drinking 
usages of the present time put a stumbling-block, or an 
occasion to fall, in the way f 

No one will maintain, however social they may be, that 
they are the means of grace, or that they promote spiri- 
tuality. It must, on the other hand, be admitted that they 
do circumscribe the usefulness of all, and seriously injure 
the spirituality of many. No one wh© uses alcoholic 
drinks, and furnishes them to his guests, can say they do 
him no injury. He is not a reliable judge in his own 
case. Others see and deplore the decline of spirituality 
and the increased power of worldliness which he makes 
evident. 

The point particularly to be regarded is the influence 
exerted upon those invited to your festive gatherings, and 
to whom you offer the intoxicating drinks, even so press- 



94 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

ing them as to overcome reluctance, and perhaps con- 
scientious convictions. Do jou not thus put a stumbling- 
block, an impediment, an hindrance, in the way of the 
Christian usefulness and spiritual progress of your brother 
— perhaps younger in years, and in the church, than your- 
self ? Do not these prove a cause of offence and of scandal, 
of sinning and of falling? Where are many who once 
were active, exemplary members of the churches ? Alas ! 
alas ! they first learned to sip politely at the fashionable 
party given by a church member, and by sipping acquired 
the appetite which led on to drunkenness and the drunk- 
ard's grave. We can all recall mournful illustrations. 

As others may not have the same cold temperament or 
self-control as yourself, your example is terrific upon the 
ardent temperament of the young. For their sakes, the 
apostolic command binds you to take this stumbling-block, 
this hindrance, this occasion to sin and to fall, out of the 
way of your brother. (See Rom. xiv. 17 and xv. 1-3.) 

We should never forget what our Lord has said, Matt, 
xviii. 7, " Woe to the man by whom the offence cometh ! " 
Luke xvii. 1, "But woe unto him through whom they 
[offences] come ! It were better for him that a millstone 
were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, 
than that he should offend [cause to stumble or fall] one 
of these little ones." 

I can hardly believe that this subject has been seriously 
and prayerfully pondered by those Christian professors 
who habitually spread intoxicating drinks before their 
guests, especially at evening entertainments, where the 
young and unsuspecting are convened. 

The great barrier which blocks the temperance reform 
is not found among the drunkards nor in the grog-shops, 
but in the circles of fashion. So long as these drinks 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 95 

are found in the fashionable parties and defended as the 
good creatures of God, so long the masses will be so influ- 
enced as to be swept along with this fearful tide. 

EXPEDIENCY. 

Rom. xiv. 14-21, " Neither eat flesh nor drink wine," 
etc. Expediency necessarily admits the lawfulness and 
propriety of the use of alcoholic drinks, but that, by 
reason of the evils which come from the excessive use, 
men should totally abstain. This does not include the 
idea of personal danger. It rather assumes it as a cer- 
tainty that the abstainer can so use them as never to 
exceed the boundaries of prudence. But because of 
others, not so firm of nerve, or resolute of purpose or 
power of self-government, we should abstain in order to 
strengthen, encourage, and save them. In this view, they 
feel fortified by the noble decision of the Apostle Paul, 
" Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will 
eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my 
brother to offend." In the Epistle to the Romans, he 
speaks of those converted from Judaism, but who still 
felt bound to observe the ceremonial law. Other con- 
verts, satisfied that this law was abolished, consequently 
made no distinction in meats. The former were offended 
by the practice of the latter. To meet this case, the 
apostle says, "It is good neither to eat flesh nor drink 
wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is 
offended, or is made weak." 

To the Corinthians, 1, viii. 4-13, he speaks of those 
recently converted from idolatry, and who were troubled 
about the lawfulness of eating meats which had been 
offered to idols and then sold in the markets. Whilst he 



96 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

argues that the meat cannot be thus polluted, still, as 
" there is not in every man that knowledge," and as their 
wean consciences would be defiled, he admonishes those 
who were enlightened " to take heed lest by any means 
this liberty of yours becomes a stumbling-block' to them 
that are weak." He presents the subject in the most 
solemn and impressive manner, saying, " When ye sin so 
against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, 
ye sin against Christ." The practical and benevolent 
conclusion to which he comes is, "If meat make my 
brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world 
standeth, lest I make my brother to offend." 

Thus, in two applications, the doctrine of expediency 
is fully stated. It is necessarily based upon the lawful- 
ness of the usage, and the rightfulness of our liberty in 
the premises. 1 Cor. x. 23, " All things are lawful unto 
me, but all things are not expedient : all things are law- 
ful for me, but I will not be brought under the power 
of any." With Paul, expediency was not the balancing 
of evils, nor the selfish defence of a doubtful usage ; but 
the law of benevolence, so controlling and circumscribing 
his liberty as to prevent any injury to the conscience of 
another. " Even as I please all men in all things, not 
seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they 
may be saved." — 1 Cor. x. 33. 

The abstinence to which Paul alludes was lest the 
weak conscience of a brother should be wounded. 
This is not the precise use of the principle in its 
application to temperance ; for those who drink do not 
plead conscience, and those who abstain do not abstain 
because for them to drink would wound the consciences 
of the drinkers. So far from this, our drinking quiets 
and encourages their consciences. No one can study 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 9*7 

this argument of the apostle, and his further state- 
ment in 1 Cor. ix. 19-23, and fail to feel its benevolent 
and constraining power. It evolves a principle of action 
which we are bound to recognize and apply to the neces- 
sities of our fellow-men. It demands that we should 
deny ourselves for the purpose of doing good to others 
who are exposed to evil. It is the giving up of the use 
of alcoholic drinks to recover others from ruin, and to 
save more from taking the first step on the road to drunk- 
enness. 

Whilst I fully admit the doctrine of expediency, as laid 
down by the apostle, 1 am not quite sure that the use 
which is generally made of it for the cause of temperance 
may not be turned against us. I am not certain that, as 
generally expounded, it does not reflect most fearfully, 
though undesignedly, upon the benevolence of the 
patriarchs, prophets, the apostles, and even of the blessed 
Lord our Saviour. 

I do not for a moment imagine, much less believe, that 
the advocates of only alcoholic wines intend to damage 
the benevolence of the divine Saviour. Yet, when they 
strenuously claim that he not only personally drank in- 
toxicating wine, but made a large quantity of it for the 
wedding-guests, they throw shadows over his benevo- 
lence ; for he, better than all others, knew the seductive 
and destructive influence of alcoholic drinks, as he could 
not only look back through all the ages past, but also down 
through all the ages to come, and tell the myriads upon 
myriads who by them would be made drunkards and fail 
of heaven ; as he, better than all others, understood the 
law of benevolence, and knew how to practise self-denial 
for the good of others. But we hear not one word from 
him about expediency. What possible claim, then, can 



98 

this doctrine have upon his followers, if he, with all his 
wonderfully accurate knowledge, not only did not prac- 
tise it, but did the reverse, and gave the full force of his 
personal example for the beverage use of /inebriating 
wines — nay, more, actually employed his divine power 
in making, for a festive occasion, a large quantity of in- 
toxicating wine ? Such is the fearful position in which 
these alcoholic advocates logically, though unwittingly, 
place their blessed Lord and ours. But there is no neces- 
sity for this dilemma, or for the encouragement it gives to 
the enemies of temperance. The view we have taken, and, 
as we trust, proved, satisfactorily explains why neither the 
patriarchs nor the prophets, why neither Christ nor his 
apostles, had any occasion to adopt the doctrine of expe- 
diency in its application to alcoholic drinks. 

The grapes of Palestine being very sweet, and the cli- 
mate at the vintage season very hot, by the law of fer- 
mentation the juice would speedily become sour unless 
preserved by methods which prevented all fermentation. 
Having good reason to believe that the wine Christ drank, 
and which he made for the wedding, was the pure " blood 
of the grapes," his example gave no sanction to others 
who used intoxicating wines. 

We all are aware that there are many thousands of 
intelligent Christians who have never yet felt themselves 
bound by the argument for expediency. They find in it 
no authority, and it does not bind their conscience. They 
seize upon the inevitable fact that expediency implies the 
lawfulness and propriety of the beverage use of alcoholic 
drinks, and ask, " Why is my liberty judged by another 
man's conscience ? " There are many who seriously doubt 
whether the reformation can be completed whilst such 
persons of intelligence and influence are in the way. 



THE WINES OP THE ANCIENTS. 99 

At the present time, when there are only alcoholic 
wines in the walks of commerce, and there is not the 
choice which, we believe, obtained in the days of Christ, 
and as these alcoholic beverages are doing wild havoc 
among men, we fully recognize the law of benevolence 
as a divine law, and as binding upon every individual. 
We hold that this law demands that we practise total 
abstinence, not simply for our own personal safety or 
that of our family, but especially for the good of others, 
that they may be rescued from the way of the destroyer, or, 
what is better, effectually prevented from taking the first 
step in this road to perdition. We, then, that are strong, 
ought to bear the infirmities of the weak and not please 
ourselves. Let every one of us please his neighbor for 
his good to edification. For even Christ pleased not 
himself; but, as it is written, "the reproaches of them 
that reproached thee fell on me." — Rom. xv. 1-3. 

1 Cor. vi. 9-11, " Covetous nor drunkards." It will 
be noticed that drunkards are here classed with fornica- 
tors, adulterers, effeminate, thieves, covetous, etc., all of 
whom, continuing such, " shall not inherit the kingdom 
of God." Total abstinence from all these is a necessity. 
So long as mere moderation in them is concerned, there 
is no hope of reformation ; nay, so long as any participa- 
tion in them is concerned, there is no salvation. The 
moderate use of intoxicating drinks is unsafe ; for strong 
men, in all stations of life, have fallen, and died drunk- 
ards, and many are following on. Total abstinence is the 
scriptural doctrine for all, and from all the practices 
which expose men to the sins which shut them out of 
heaven. Christ taught "lead us not into temptation," 
and Paul exhorts " that no man put a stumbling-block, or 
an occasion to fall, in his brother's way." 



100 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

1 Cor. vi. 12, " All things lawful, etc., not expedient."" 
See Rom. xiv. 14-21. 

1 Cor. viii. 4-13, "Meat made to offend," etc. See 
Rom. xiv. 14-21. 

1 Cor. x. 22-30, " Sold in shambles, eat," etc. See 
Rom. xiv. 14-21. 

ICor. ix. 25, " Temperate." The Greek word enhratla is 
byDonnegan rendered "self-command, self-control, tem- 
perance, mastery over the passions ; " Robinson and others, 
IS". T. Lexicons, "self-control, continence, temperance." 
See Acts xxiv. 25, Gal. v. 23, and 2 Pet. i. 6, iv. 5. In 
the text, it is the power of self-control, or continence, as 
one striving for the mastery. Dr. Whitby says, " Observ- 
ing a strict abstinence." Dr. Bloomneld, " extreme tem- 
perance and even abstinence." Horace says of the com- 
petitor for the Olympic games, " He abstains from Yenus 
and Bacchus." Dr. Clarke states that the regimen in- 
cluded both quantity and quality, carefully abstaining 
from all things that might render them less able for the 
combat. The best modern trainers prohibit the use * of 
beer, wine, and spirits. The apostle, having thus illustra- 
ted, by reference to the competitors of the Olympic games, 
his idea of temperance, to wit, total abstinence, adds, as an 
encouragement, " They do it to obtain a corruptible crown, 
but we an incorruptible " Here is no warrant for mode- 
rate drinking, or for those fashionable circles of festivity 
where the sparkling wines sear the conscience, deaden 
spirituality, and unfit the Christian professor for that con- 
flict with the world, the flesh, and the devil, the tri-partite 
alliance which he must overcome, or for ever perish. See 
Gal. v. 19-23, and notes on Acts xxiv. 25. 

1 Cor. xi. 20-34, " Hungry and drunken." " Methuei, 
drunken, being used as antithetical to peina, hungry, re- 



THE WINES OP THE ANCIENTS. 101 

quires to be understood in the generic sense of satiated, 
and not in the restricted and emphatic sense of intoxicated. 
That St. Paul should thus have employed it is in harmony 
with the fact that he was familiar with the LXX. transla- 
tion of the O. T., where such a use of the word frequently 
occurs. Gen. xliii. 34, ' Drank and were merry ; ' Ps. 
xxiii. 5, • Cup runneth over • ' Ps. xxxvi. 8, ' Abundantly 
satisfied with the fatness of thy house ;' Ps. lxv. 10, ' Set- 
tlest the furrows,' i.e., saturate / Jer. xxxi. 14, ' Satiate 
the soul of my priests with fatness ; ' Cant. v. 1, " Drink 
abundantly or be satiated ; ' Prov. v. 19, ' Let her breasts 
satisfy thee.' A large collection of such texts, illustra- 
ing the usage of methud, will be found in the works of 
Dr. Lees, vol. ii, showing its application to food, to milk, 
to water, to blood, to oil, as well as to wine. — Bib. Com. 
p. 340. 

Archbishop Newcome, on John ii. 10 and 1 Cor. xi. 
21, says, " The word methuei does not necessarily denote 
drunkenness. The word may denote abundance without 
excess." 

Bloomfield, in loco, says, " It is rightly remarked by 
the ancient commentators that the ratio oppositi requires 
the word to be interpreted only of satiety in both drink- 
ing and eating. We need not suppose any drunkenness 
or gluttony. See Notes on John ii. 10. The fault with 
which they are charged is sensuality and selfishness at a 
meal united with the eucharistical feast." — Yol. ii. p. 143. 

Donnegan defines methud, " to drink unmixed wine, to 
drink wine especially at festivals ; to be intoxicated ; to 
drink to excess." Robinson, " to be drunk ; to get drunk ; 
hence, to carouse." Green, " to be intoxicated." 

We have thus given a sample of the authorities on the 
use of this Greek word. It must be plain that the criti- 



102 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

cal students of the ISTew Testament are not all of the 
opinion that the Corinthian brethren were gnilty of 
drunkenness. Admitting that the word, in this particular 
place, means to be intoxicated, it proves that there were 
inebriating drinks, which no one denies, but it cannot 
prove that these were the only kind then used, especially 
as the word has a generic character and a large applica- 
tion. 

The facts of the case are instructive. These converts 
from idolatry, mistaking the Lord's Supper for a feast, 
easily fell into their former idolatrous practices. The rich 
brought plentifully of their viands, and gave themselves 
selfishly to festivity. The poor, unable thus to provide, 
were a body by themselves, and were left to go hungry. 
This discrimination between the rich and the poor was " a 
despising of the house of God," and was an unchristian 
act, which the apostle condemned. It is not stated that 
all the members were drunken, for the narrative expressly 
says, " One is hungry, and another is drunken," which 
clearly indicates that a portion were not drunken. As 
the poor are generally the majority in churches, the strong 
probability is that a minority only were offenders in pros- 
tituting the ordinance and in the matter of drinking. If 
an intoxicating wine was used on this occasion by the rich 
church members when they turned the Lord's Supper into 
a common festive occasion, it furnishes no evidence that 
such wine was the proper element for the Scriptural cele- 
bration of that ordinance. Paul re-enacted the Supper as 
originally instituted, and restored it .to its proper celebra- 
tion. It is worthy of notice that he says, x. 16, " The 
cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion 
of the blood of Christ ; the bread which we break, is it 
not the communion of the body of Christ ? Ye cannot 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 103 

drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils. Ye 
cannot be partakers of the Lord's table and the table of 
devils." The contrast between the tables and the cups is 
apostolic and instructive. Their table and the cup they 
used were the devil's. The proper table and the proper 
cup were the Lord's. If their cup contained that which 
was intoxicating, it was, as Paul declares, the devil's cup ; 
but the cup which contained that which was the opposite, 
and was not intoxicating, was, as the apostle teaches, the 
Lord's cup, the cup of blessing. 

Gal. v. 19-24, u Drunkenness and temperance." The 
Apostle Paul draws a striking contrast between the works 
of the flesh and the fruits of the Spirit. Of the former he 
says, " Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are 
these : adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, 
idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, 
strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, 
revellings, and such like ; of the which I tell you before, 
as I have also told you in time past, that they which do 
such things cannot inherit the kingdom of God." 

Of the latter he says, in immediate connection and con- 
trast, " But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long- 
suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, tempe- 
rance : against such there is no law. And they that are 
Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and 
lusts." Temperance, which is self-restraint from, and not 
in, the use of whatever is injurious, is here placed in op- 
position to drunkenness. To be safe — abstain. See Notes 
on Acts xxiv. 25 and 1 Cor. ix. 25. 

Eph v. 18, " Be not drunk with wine, wherein is ex- 
cess ; but be filled with the Spirit." In this place, oinos 
most probably designates an intoxicating liquor. The 
word translated excess is asotia, literally unsavableness. 



104 THE LAWS OP FEEMENTATION, AND 

It is a word compounded of a, privative or negative, and 
sozo, to save, and thus defined by the lexicon, " The dispo- 
sition and the life of one who is asdtos, abandoned, reck- 
lessly debauched, profligacy, dissoluteness, debauchery." 
Eph. v. 18; Tit. i. 6 ; 1 Pet. iv. 4. 

The apostle here contrasts inebriating wine and the 
Holy Spirit. He warns men against the wine, and exhorts 
them to be filled with the Spirit. " He presents a practi- 
cal antithesis between fulness of wine and fulness of the 
Divine Spirit ; not an antithesis between one state of fulness 
and another — mere effects — but an antithesis pointing to 
an intrinsic contrariety of nature and operation, between 
the sources of such fulness, viz., inebriating wine and the 
Holy Spirit." — Bib. Com. p. 353. The excess does not, 
then, so much apply to the quantity of wine used as to the 
mental and moral condition of the person ; since the word 
asotia denotes such entire dissoluteness of mind and heart 
as to forbid the hope of salvation. 

The apostle properly warns the Ephesian converts 
against the feasts of Bacchus, where the votaries were 
made mad by wine and debauching songs ; but, in con- 
trast, exhorts them to be filled with the Spirit ; and, in- 
stead of the noisy, silly talk and songs of the bacchanalians, 
to manifest their joy and happiness in psalms and hymns 
and spiritual songs, thus making melody in their hearts 
unto the Lord. 

Olshausen, referring to Luke i. 15, thus comments: 
"Man feels the want of a strengthening through spiritual 
influences from without ; instead of seeking for these in 
the Holy Spirit, he, in his blindness, has recourse to the 
natural spirit, that is, to wine and strong drinks. There- 
fore, according to the point of view of the Law, the Old 
Testament recommends abstinence from wine and strong 



THE WINES OP THE ANCIENTS. 105 

drinks, in order to preserve the soul free from all merely 
natural influences, and by that means to make it more 
susceptible of the operations of the Holy Spirit." 

The soul filled with the Holy Spirit will not crave an 
intoxicating beverage to cheer and enliven. 

Phil. iv. 5, "Let your moderation be known unto all 
men. The Lord is at hand." There is not the slightest 
evidence, either^ from the original word or the context, 
that this text has the remotest reference to moderate 
drinking. The Greek word epieikees occurs live times : 
thrice it is rendered gentle, once patient, and once mode- 
ration. In each case, reference is made to the state of the 
mind, and it might be properly translated, Let your mode- 
ration of mind be known unto all men. Robinson renders 
it meet, suitable, proper. The reason given for moderation 
is, " The Lord is at hand." . How strange to say to the 
drinkers, Drink moderately, for the Lord is at hand ! But 
to the Christians at Philippi, then suffering persecutions, 
the exhortation had point : Let your moderation — that is, 
your patience, gentleness, mildness, propriety — be known 
to all men, as a testimony in favor of Christianity. The 
Lord is at hand is a motive of encouragement. 

Col. ii. 16, "Let no man, therefore, judge you in meat 
or drink," etc. 

This has no reference to a distinction of drinks as fer- 
mented or unfermented, dangerous or safe, but to those re- 
garded as clean or unclean. That is, proper according to 
the Jewish law, for the context names holy days, new moon, 
and Sabbath-days. The point is here — since this law has 
fulfilled its mission and ceased, therefore use your Chris- 
tian liberty, and no man must be allowed to condemn 
you for not now conforming to the requirements of that 
abrogated law. 



106 

1 Thess. v. 7, " They that be drunken are drunken in 
the night." This simply states a fact in that age, but im- 
plies no approbation of intoxicating drinks. The ancient 
heathen regarded being drunk in the daytime as indecent. 
In contrast with the stupidity, sensuality, and darkness 
in which the heathen lived, the exhortation to the Chris- 
tians who are of the day is to be sober. The Greek word 
is nee-phomen, from neephoo, which occurs six times, and 
is four times rendered sober, and twice watch. The idea 
of vigilant circumspection and abstinence is impressed by 
all the context. The classical lexicon defines nepho by — 
" sdbrius sum, vigilo, non bib" — to be sober, vigilant, 
not to drink. Donnegan, " To live abstemiously, to ab- 
stain from wine ; " metaphorically, " to be sober, discreet, 
wise, circumspect, or provident, to act with prudence." 
Robinson's New Testament Lexicon, " To be sober, tem- 
perate, abstinent, especially in respect of wine." This 
sobriety is associated with putting on the Christian armor, 
and it is the call for vigilant wakefulness, having all the 
powers of mind and body in proper condition. 

1 Timothy hi. 2, 3, " !Not given to wine." The Apostle 
Paul, in this first letter to Timothy, whom he calls his 
" own son in the faith," names thirteen qualifications for 
a bishop or pastor. " A bishop, then, must be blameless, 
the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, 
given to hospitality, apt to teach ; not given to wine, no 
striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a 
brawler, not covetous." The language is imperative, 
" Must be / " thus designating that these qualifications 
are indispensable. He spake with authority, being in- 
spired of God. 

It is not my purpose to examine each of these thirteen, 
but to call attention to three of them, as bearing particu- 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 107 

larly on the duty of abstinence. In the Authorized Version, 
we read, a Vigilant, sober, not given to wine." That we 
may the more perfectly understand the meaning of these, 
we must look at the original Greek words used by the 
apostle. 

Vigilant. — The Greek is neephalion, which Donne- 
gan's Lexicon renders "abstemious; that abstains, espe- 
cially from wine." Hence, " sober, discreet, circumspect, 
cautious." Robinson's New Testament Lexicon defines 
the word, " Sober, temperate, especially in respect to 
wine" In N". T., trop., " sober-minded, watchful, cir- 
cumspect." In the adjective form, the word occurs only 
in 1 Tim. iii. 2, 11, and Tit. ii. 2, from the verb neepho, 
which Donnegan defines, " To live abstemiously, to abstain 
from wine." Green's New Testament Lexicon, u To be 
sober, not intoxicated ; metaphorically, to be vigilant, 
circumspect." 

Sober. — The Greek is sophrona. Donnegan, " That is, 
of sound mind and good understanding ; sound in intel- 
lect, not deranged ; intelligent, discreet, prudent, or wise." 
Green, "Sound; of a sound mind, sane, staid, temperate, 
discreet, 1 Tim. iii. 2 ; Tit. i. 8 ; ii. 3. Modest, chaste, Tit. 
ii. 5." Macknight, " Sound mind ; one who governs his 
passions, prudent." Bloomfield, " Sober-minded, or- 
derly." 

Not given to wine. — The Greek is mee-paroinon : mee, 
a negative particle, not / ^><m>m6w,compounded of para, a 
preposition governing the genitive (of, from, on the part 
of), the dative (at, by, near, with), the accusative (toge- 
ther, with, to, towards, by, near, at, next to) ; and oinos, 
wine. Literally, not at, by, near, or with wine. This 
looks considerably like total abstinence. It applies equally 
to private habits and public conduct. Notice the care- 



108 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

ful steps of the progress. He must be neephalion, ab- 
stinent, sober in body, that he may be sophrona, sound 
in mind, and that his influence may be unimpaired, mee- 
parion, not with or near wine. We find in this passage 
no countenance for the moderate use of intoxicating 
wine, but the reverse, the obligation to abstain totally. 

" Not given to wine" is certainly a very liberal trans- 
lation, and shows here the usages of the day unconsciously 
influenced the translators. " The ancient paroinos was a 
man accustomed to attend drinking-parties." Thus the 
Christian minister is required not only to be personally 
sober, but also to withhold his presence and sanction from 
those assemblies where alcoholic drinks are used, en- 
dangering the sobriety of himself and others. 

That both Paul and Timothy understood that total 
abstinence was an essential qualification for the Christian 
pastor, is evident from the compliance of Timothy. In 
this same letter, v. 23, Paul advises Timothy, " Drink no 
longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake 
and thine often infirmities.'' The fact is plain that Tim- 
othy, in strict accordance with the direction, "not given 
to wine," that is, not with or near wine, was a total 
abstainer. The recommendation to " use a little wine " 
is exceptional, and strictly medicinal. As there existed 
in the Roman Empire, in which Timothy travelled, a 
variety of wines, differing from each other in character, 
we cannot decide, ex cathedra, that it was alcoholic wine 
that Paul recommended. Pliny, Columella, Philo, and 
others state that many of the wines of their day produced 
"'headaches, dropsy, madness, and stomach complaints." 
— JVotty Lond. Ed. p. 96. We can hardly believe that 
Paul recommended these. Yet these strikingly designate 
the effects of alcoholic wines. The same writers tell us 



THE WINES OP THE ANCIENTS. 109 

that wines destitute of all strength were exceedingly 
wholesome and useful to the body, salubre corporis. 
Pliny mentions a wine in good repute, aduminon — that 
is, without power, without strength. He particularly 
states that the wines most adapted to the sick are " TJtil- 
issimum vinwn omnibus sacco virions fractis" which 
the alcoholic wine men translate, " For all the sick, wine 
is most useful when its forces have been broken by the 
strainer." We do not object to this rendering, since the 
wine must be harmless when its forces, which is alcohol, 
are broken. The Latin word fractis is from frango, to 
break in pieces, to dash in pieces, which indicates the 
thoroughness of the work done by the " sacco," strainer 
or filter. That the force which the filter breaks is fer- 
mentation, is evident from the next sentence of Pliny. 
(See item " Filtration," on a preceding page.) Horace, lib. 
i. ode 17, speaks of the innocentis Lesbii, innocent Les- 
bian, which Professor C. Smart renders " unintoxicating." 
The Delphin Notes to Horace say, " The ancients filtered 
their wines repeatedly before they could have fermented. 
And thus the faeces which nourish the strength of the 
wine being taken away, they rendered the wine itself more 
liquid, weaker, lighter, sweeter, and more pleasant to 
drink." 

Again, Horace tells his friend Maecenas to drink an hun- 
dred glasses, without fear of intoxication. (See previous 
page in this volume.) 

Athengeus says of the sweet Lesbian, "Let him take 
sweet wine (gluJcus), either mixed with water or warmed, 
especially that called protropos, as being very good for the 
stomach."— Nott, Lond. Ed. p. 96, and Bib. Com. 374. 

Protropos was, according to Pliny, " Mnstum quod 
sponte prqfluit antequam twee calcentur" " The must 



110 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

which flows spontaneously from the grapes." — JFott, Lond. 
Ed. p. 80. 

Donnegan defines it, " Wine flowing from the grapes 
before pressure." 

Smith's Greek and Roman Antiquities, " That which 
flowed from the clusters, in consequence of their pressure 
upon each other, to which the inhabitants of Mytelene 
gave the name protropos" 

Why not treat Paul with common politeness, not to 
say honesty, and, as he so emphatically required that a 
bishop should " not be with or near wine," believe that 
when he recommended Timothy to "use a little wine" 
medicinally, he had reference to such wine as Pliny says 
was "most useful for the sick,' ; whose "forces have been 
broken by the strainer," or filter ? As the recommenda- 
tion was not for gratification, but for medicine, to Timothy 
personally, a sick man, and only a little at that, it gives 
no more countenance for the beverage use of wine for any 
one, and especially for those in health, than does the pre- 
scription of castor-oil by the physician for the beverage 
use of that article. 

The case of Timothy, a total abstainer, illustrates and 
enforces the inspired declaration that a bishop must be 
vigilant, that is, abstinent ; sober, that is, sound in mind ; 
and not given to wine, that is, not with or near wine. 
If all who are now in the sacred office would follow lite- 
rally and faithfully the requirements which Paul lays 
down, " not with or near wine," the number of total 
abstainers would be greatly increased, the cause of tem- 
perance would be essentially promoted, and the good of 
the community permanently secured; for, according to 
Paul, total abstinence is an indispensable qualification for 
a pastor. 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. Ill 

1 Tim. iii. 8., Deacons — " not given to much wine." 

This is held as evidence not only that they might use 
some wine, hut also that the wine was intoxicating. The 
Greek word proscko occurs twenty-four times, and is eight 
times rendered beware ; six times, take heed ; four, gave 
heed ; one, giving heed ; two, gave attendance ; one, 
attended ; one, had regard ; one, given to wine. Robin- 
son's rendering is, " to give or devote one's self to any- 
thing ; " and other lexicons, " be addicted to, engage in, 
be occupied with," as in 1 Tim. i. 4; iii. 8. The deacons 
of the primitive churches were converts mostly from idol- 
atry, and in their unconverted state were accustomed to 
voluptuousness and sensuality. 

In the previous pages, we have seen that those who 
were dissfpated and voluptuous preferred the wine whose 
strength had been broken by the filter, because it enabled 
them to drink largely without becoming intoxicated. 
They used various methods to promote thirst. These 
voluptuous drinkers continued at times all night at their 
feasts. " Excessive drinking, even of uninebriating drinks, 
was a •> }e prevalent in the days of St. Paul, and corre- 
sponded to gluttony, also common — the excessive use 
of food, but not of an intoxicating kind." — Bib. Com. 
p. 368. Paul is simply guarding the deacons against a 
Tice of the day. 

Such devotion to any kind of wine showed a voluptu- 
ousness unseemly in one holding office in the church of 
Christ. " To argue that, forbidding much wine, Paul ap- 
proves of the use of some wine, and of any and every sort,' 
is to adopt a mode of interpretation dangerous and wholly 
inconsistent with common usage." When applied to the 
clause, " ' not greedy of filthy lucre,' it would sanction all 
avarice and trade craftiness short of that greed which is 



112 

mean and reckless." But Paul, and other inspired writers, 
make all eovetousness to be idolatry, and not to be onee 
named, much less practised by the saints, even mode- 
rately. 

1 Tim. iii. 11, " Wives, be sober." The same Greek 
word is in verse 2 rendered vigilant, and which Donne- 
gan renders abstemious, that abstains, especially from 
wine. The !N~. T. Greek lexicons define it, " temperate, 
abstinent in respect to wine." 

1 Tim. iv. 4, " Every creature of God is good," etc. 
This text has no reference to drinks of any kind, but is 
directly connected with the meats named in verse 3, and 
which some had forbidden to be eaten. These, the apos- 
tle says, are to be received and used, because they are the 
creatures of God, and by him given for the good of man. 
The original word broma occurs seventeen times, and is 
always rendered meat and meats, except once, victuals. 
"Robinson, eatables ■, food, i.e., solid food opposed to milk. 
1 Cor. iii. 2. It means food of all kinds proper to be 
eaten. But alcohol is not meat in any sense. It is not 
food ; it will not assimilate, nor does it incorporate itself 
with any part of the body. Says Dr. Lionel S. Beale, 
Fhysician to King's College Hospital, England, " Alcohol 
does not act as food ; it does not nourish tissues." Dr. 
James Edmunds, of Edinburgh, says, " Alcohol is, in fact, 
treated by the human system not as food, but as an in- 
truder and as a poison." 

In keeping with this is the statement, 1 Sam. xxv. 37, 
"When the wine was gone out of ^sTabul." This is sin- 
gularly accurate, and accords with the most approved dis- 
coveries of science, viz., " that intoxication passes off be- 
cause the alcohol goes out of the body — being expelled 
from it b;y all the excretory organs as an intruder into 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 113 

and disturber of the living house which God has fearfully 
and wonderfully made." Dr. Willard Parker, of New 
York, has used the same illustration. 

The testimony of Dr. J. "W. Beaumont, Lecturer on 
Materia Medica in Sheffield Medical School, England, 
is, "Alcoholic liquors are not nutritious, they are not a 
tonic, they are not beneficial in any sense of the word." 

The original grant for food reads, Gen. i. 29, " Behold, 
I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon 
the face of the earth, and every tree in the which is the 
fruit of a tree yielding seed ; to you it shall be for meat." 
Yerse 31 : " And God saw everything that he had made, 
and behold it was very good." 

The original grant extended only to vegetables. These 
were for meat, literally " for eating" or that which is to 
be eaten. Every direct product of the earth fit for food 
is he:e given to man. The design was to sustain life. 
Hei.ce, whatever will not assimilate and repair the waste 
is not food, and not proper for the rise of man. 

Who imagines, when the work of creation wab finished, 
that alcohol could then be found in any living thing fresh 
from the hand of the Creator ? God, by his direct act, 
does not make alcohol. The laws of nature, if left to 
themselves, do not produce it. By these laws, the grapes 
ripen ; if not eaten, they rot and are decomposed. The 
manufacture of alcohol is wholly man's device. The asser- 
tion that alcohol is in sugar, and in all unfermented saccha- 
rine substances which are nutritious, is contradicted by 
chemical science. The saccharine matter is nutritious, 
but fermentation changes the sugar into alcohol, by which 
process all the sugar is destroyed, and, as the alcohol con- 
tains no nitrogen, it cannot make blood or help to repair 
bodily waste. The testimony of eminent chemists is very 



114 

decided. Sir Humphry Davy, in his Agricultural Chem- 
istry, says of alcohol, "It has never been found ready 
formed in plants." Count Chaptal, the great French 
chemist, says, "Mature never forms spirituous liquors; 
she rots the grape upon the branches, but it is art which 
converts the juice into (alcoholic) wine." 

Professor Turner, in his Chemistry, affirms the non- 
natural character of alcohol, "It does not exist ready 
formed in plants, but is a product of the vinous fermen- 
tation — a process which must be initiated, superintended, 
and, at a certain state, arrested by art." — Bib. Cam. 
p. 370. 

Dr. Henry Morrison, of England, in his Lecture on 
Medical Jurisprudence, says, " Alcohol is nowhere to be 
found in any product of nature, was never created by 
God, but is essentially an artificial thing prepared by man 
through the destructive process of fermentation." * 



* The four following experiments tell their own tale : 

" 1. One pound of fully ripe grapes (black Haniburgs) were put 
into a glass retort, with half a pint of water, and distilled very 
slowly, until three fluid-ounces had passed into the receiver. This 
product had no alcoholic smell. It was put into a small glass 
retort, with an ounce of fused chloride of calcium, and distilled 
very slowly, till a quarter fluid-ounce was drawn ; this second educt 
had no smell of alcohol ; nor was it, in the slightest degree, inflam- 
mable." 

" 2 and 3. A flask was filled with grapes, none of which had 
been deprived of their stalks, and it was inverted in mercury. 
Another flask was filled with grapes from which the stalks had 
been pulled, and many of them otherwise were bruised. This 
flask was also inverted in mercury. The flasks were placed, for 
five days, in a room of the average temperature of about 70°. 

" In the perfect grapes no change was perceivable. In the bruised 
grapes, pu&refactwn had proceeded to an extent, in each grape, pro- 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 115 

For the views of Professor Liebig on fermentation, see 
:i Fermentation," in this treatise. 

" Lo, this have I found," saith the wise man (Ecc. vii. 
29), " that God made man upright, but they have sought 
out many inventions." 

The things created for food, and which are to be received 
with thanksgiving, are those which are in their natural and 
wholesome condition, and which nourish and strengthen 
the body, and not those which are in the process of de- 
composition. Rotten fruits of all kinds are rejected as 
innutritious and unwholesome. So also are decaying 
meats. It is a strange perversion of all science, as well 
as of common sense, to rank among the good creatures 
of God alcohol, which is found in no living plant, but 
which is to be found only after the death of the fruit, and 
is the product of decomposition. 

portionate to the degree of injury it had sustained ; the sound parts 
of each continued unchanged." 

"4. The grapes were now removed from the flasks, and the juice 
expressed from each. The juice from the bruised grapes had not 
an alcoholic, but a 'putrescent flavor. The juice from the sound 
grapes was perfectly sweet. 

"Both these juices were placed in tightly corked phials half- 
filled, and subjected to a proper fermenting temperature. It was 
three days before the commencement of fermentation, in each, 
was indicated by the evolution of carbonic acid gas, as also by the 
color of the alcohol, and of the aromatic oils always generated in 
such cases. I, therefore, still believe it to be a fact that grapes do 
not produce alcohol ; that it can result only where the juice has 
been expressed from them, and then not suddenly ; and that, where 
the hand of man interferes not, alcohol is never formed." — 8. Spence, 
Chemist to the Yorkshire Agricultural Society; F. R. Lees, Ap- 
pendix B, pp. 198 and 199. 

These justify the statement of Mr. Lees, that " neither ripened 
nor rotting grapes ever contain alcohol." 



116 

The analysis of wines, as published in the Lancet, Oct. 
26, 1867, shows that, in one thousand grains of the wines 
named, there was only one and one-half grains of albu- 
minous matter, whilst in the same amount of raw beef 
there were two hundred and seven grains, that is, one 
hundred and fifty-six times more nourishment in the same 
quantity of beef than in wine. — Bib. Com. p. 370. The 
analysis of the beer in common use proves that there is 
more nourishment in one small loaf of wheat bread than 
in many gallons of beer. Medical men testify that the 
flesh of habitual beer-drinkers becomes so poisoned that 
slight wounds become incurable, and result often in 
speedy death. 

1 Tim. v. 23, " No longer water." See 1 Tim. iii. 2, 3. 
Titus i. 7, 8, " !N"ot given to wine," " temperate." 

Here Paul mentions the same qualifications for a pastor 
as those stated in his first letter to Timothy iii. 3, " ISTot 
given to wine." He uses the same Greek word, mee- 
paroinon, compounded of mee, sl negative particle, para, 
a preposition, with or near, and oinon, wine, meaning not 
near wine, which is a happy apostolic definition of total 
abstinence. He adds temperate, which, it is pleaded, 
sanctions moderate drinking. The Greek word here used 
is enkratees. Donnegan, " Holding firm, mastering one's 
appetite or passions." — New Testament Lexicon. " Strong, 
stout, possessed of mastery, master of self." — Tit. i. 8. It 
is clear that Paul does not contradict himself in this verse : 
first, by saying the bishop must be a total abstainer — mee, 
not ; para, near ; oinon, wine — and then, in the second 
place, by saying he must be a moderate drinker. What 
he here means by temperance applies to the mind and 
not to the bodily habits. Or if it is contended that it 
does refer to the body, then it means what he says in 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 117 

1 Cor. ix. 25, where lie uses the same word in reference to 
those contending for the mastery in the games. Such 
abstain totally from wine and all excitements, or as Horace 
expresses it, " He abstains from Venus and Bacchus/' See 
^ote, 1 Cor. ix. 25 and Acts xxiv. 25. 

Titus ii. 2, 3. The aged men are exhorted to be sober, 
a temperate." The Greek is neephalion, " sober, tempe- 
rate, abstinent in respect to wine." In N. T., metaphor- 
ically, " vigilant, circumspect." — 1 Tim. iii. 2, 11; Tit. ii. 
2. For temperate the Greek is sophronos, "sound of 
mind, sober-minded, sedate, staid." Temperate, see note 
on Tit. i. 8. 

In verse 3 the aged women are exhorted, " not given 
to much wine." See comment on 1 Tim. iii. 8. 

These were to teach the young women to be " sober." 
Here the same original word is used which denotes sober- 
mindedness. See comment on 1 Tim. iii. 2. The neces- 
sity of such an exhortation is obvious from the fact that 
these, before their conversion, had been idolaters, and 
who, in the days of their ignorance, had given themselves 
up to voluptuous practices. 

Polybius, in a fragment of his 6th book, says, " Among 
the Eomans, the women were forbidden to drink (intoxi- 
cating) wine ; they drink, however, what is called possum, 
made from raisins, which drink very much resembles 
JEgosthenian and Cretan gleukos (sweet wine), which 
men use for allaying excessive thirst." — JVott, London 
Ed. p. 80. See notes John ii. 1-11. 

Western commenting on Acts ii. 13, gluteus, new sweet 
wine, says, " The Roman ladies were so fond of it, that 
they would first fill their stomachs with it, then throw it 
off by emetics, and repeat the draught. — Bib. Com. p. 
378. 



118 THE LAWS OF FEBMENTATION", AND 

Dr. F. R. Lees says, in the same page, " "We have re- 
ferred to Lueian for ourselves, and find the following illus- 
tration : ' I came, by Jove, as those who drink gleukos 
(sweet wine), swelling out their stomach, require an 
emetic' " These voluptuous habits denoted such a devo- 
tion to the enjoyment of luxury and pleasure, such an 
indulgence in sensual gratification, as unfitted these wo- 
men for a station in the Christian church, and for the 
proper discharge of the domestic duties particularly noticed 
in the text. 

The Rev. W. H. Rule, in his brief enquiry, speaking 
of this unfermented wine, says : " A larger quantity might 
be taken, and the eastern sot could enjoy himself longer 
over the cup, than if he were filled up with fermented wine, 
without being baffled by the senselessness of profound 
inebriation. — JVott, Lond. Ed. p. 223. Mr. Rule, though 
no particular friend to the temperance cause, here con- 
cedes the fact that there were two kinds of wine, the fer- 
mented and the unfermented. 

1 Peter i. 13, "Be sober." See comments on 1 Thess. 
v. 7, p. 25, where the same word occurs. 

1 Peter iv. 1-5, " Excess of wine, excess of riot." Tn 
this passage three facts are significant and instructive. 
The first is, that in their unconverted state these con- 
verts whom Peter addresses lived in the lusts of men, 
wrought the will of the Gentiles, and walked in lascivi- 
ousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and 
abominable idolatries. The second fact is, that their 
former companions thought it strange that, being Chris- 
tians, they would not " run with them to the same excess 
of riot." The third fact is, that their former companions 
spoke evil of them because of their abstinence. 

It is clear that the Christians named in this passage 



THE WINES OP THE ANCIENTS. 119 

were abstainers from their former usages, and that on this 
account they were spoken evil of, very much as are the 
total abstainers of the present day. 

Oinophlugia occurs only in this text, and is a compound 
of oinos, wine, and ^phluo, to overflow =-* a debauch with 
wine. Probably intoxicating, though the wine broken 
by the filter was preferred by the voluptuous and dis- 
sipated. 

The Greek word asotia, in Eph. v. 18, is rendered ex- 
cess, and is connected with wine; and means, literally, 
unsavableness, utter depravity, and dissoluteness. In the 
text, and Tit. i. 6, it is connected with riot, which means 
overflow, outpouring of dissoluteness, thus denoting the 
same moral character. As the two phrases occur in the 
text, it teaches that excess of wine and excess of riot are 
related to each other as cause and effect ; but excess of 
wine no more justifies moderate drinking than excess of 
riot justifies moderate rioting. The design of Peter was 
to encourage those to whom he wrote to continue in their 
abstinence. 

1 Peter iv. 7, " Be ye therefore sober" See 1 Tim. 
iii. 2. The motive for sober-mindedness is the same as 
Phil. iv. 5, which see. 

1 Peter v. 8, " Sober, vigilant. See 1 Thess. v. 6-8 ; 
Tit. ii. 2 ; 1 Peter i. 13 and iv. 7. The sobriety here 
has no reference to intoxication, but to the state of mind 
according with vigilance. The reason for wakeful vigi- 
lance is the activity and malignity of the devil. 

2 Peter i. 6, " Temperance." See Acts xxiv. 25 ; 1 
Cor. ix. 25 ; and Gal. v. 25. 

In the Revelation there are nine references to wine. 
In chap. vi. 6 and xviii. 13, wine and oil are mentioned 
as articles of necessary comfort and merchandise. In xiv. 



120 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

8, xvii. 2, and xviii. 3, we read, " Wine of the wrath of her 
fornication," " Drunk with the wine of her fornication," 
and " Drunk of the wine of her fornication." These are 
figurative, and imply punishment. In xiv. 10, " Drink 
of -the wine of the wrath of God;" xvi. 19, " Cup of the 
wine of the fierceness of his wrath." In xiv. 19, " Great 
wine-press of the wrath of God," andxix. 15, " Wine-press 
of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God." These are 
symbols of the divine vengeance. 

I have now called attention to every passage in the 
"New Testament where wine is mentioned, and have given 
to each that interpretation which to me appeared just and 
proper. How far I have carried the full conviction of my 
readers, each one must determine for himself. The results 
recorded in these pages have cost me years of patient and 
laborious investigations. My own convictions have stead- 
ily deepened and become firmer as I have canvassed the 
positions maintained by writers who hold views widely 
differing from my own. This, some may think, is stub- 
born obstinacy on my part ; but I do not thus judge my- 
self, as I am conscious, however I may err, of desiring 
only to know the truth, and hold such an understanding 
of the Bible as will best harmonize the law of God as 
developed by true science, and the law of God as written 
in the inspired page. ' 

I do not say that there are no difficulties connected with 
the wine question. All I ask is that the students of the 
Bible will treat these with the same candor and desire to 
harmonize them that they do the difficulties connected 
with astronomy, geology, and conflicting historical state- 
ments. If the lauguage of the Bible can be honestly so 
interpreted as to harmonize with the undisputed facts 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 121 

developed by the temperance reformation, in relation to 
the effects of alcoholic drinks, with the testimony of the 
most intelligent physicians and eminent chemists, that 
alcohol contains no nourishment, will neither make blood 
nor repair the waste of the body, but it is an intruder 
and a poison ; this will secure the firm friendship of many 
who now stand aloof, and will promote the temporal, 
spiritual, and eternal happiness of mankind. 

TESTIMONY. 

The following testimony, from four eminent scholars, 
may fortify the convictions already produced by the facts 
and reasonings found upon the preceding pages : 

Professor George Bush. — Mr. E. C. Delavan, having 
been referred to Professor Bush, as a learned Biblical 
scholar, from whom he might obtain correct information 
as to Bible temperance, visited him in his library, and 
stated to him his views on the wine question. With 
promptness he condemned them, and, referring to a text, 
he said, " This verse upsets your theory." When asked 
to refer to the original, he did so, and, with amazement, 
said, " JVb permission to drink intoxicating wine here. 
I do not care about wine, and it is very seldom that I 
taste it, but I have felt until now at liberty to drink, in 
moderation, from this verse." Being entreated to make 
this a subject of special and particular examination, he 
said he would. At a subsequent visit he thus greeted 
Mr. Delavan : " You have the whole ground, and, in 
time, the whole Christian world will be obliged to adopt 
your views" At the request of Mr. Delavan, he pub- 
lished his views in the New York Observer {Enquirer, 
Aug., 1869). This testimony is the more valuable, as it 



122 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION, AND 

is not only the result of a careful examination of the 
original languages, but the honest surrender to the force 
of evidence of a previous conviction. 

Rev. Dr. E. ISTott, late President of Union College, 
in his fourth lecture says : " That unintoxicating wines 
existed from remote antiquity, and were held in high 
estimation by the wise and good, there can be no reason- 
able doubt. The evidence is unequivocal and plenary." 
" We know that then, as now, inebriety existed ; and 
then, as now, the taste for inebriating wines may have 
been the prevalent taste, and intoxicating wines the pop- 
ular wines. Still unintoxicating wines existed, and there 
were men who preferred such wines, and who have left 
on record the avowal of that preference." — JVott, Lon. 
Ed. p. 85. 

Professor Moses Stuart. — " My final conclusion is 
this, viz. : that, whenever the Scriptures speak of wine as 
a comfort, a blessing, or a libation to God, and rank it 
with such articles as corn and oil, they mean — they can 
mean — only such wine as contained no alcohol that could 
have a mischievous tendency ; that wherein they denounce 
it, prohibit it, and connect it with drunkenness and revel- 
ling, they can mean only alcoholic or intoxicating wine. 

" If I take the position that God's Word and works 
entirely harmonize, I must take the position that the case 
before us is as I have represented it to be. Pacts show 
that the ancients not only preserved wine unfermented, 
but regarded it as of a higher flavor and finer quality 
than fermented wine. Facts show that it was, and might 
be, drunk at pleasure without any inebriation whatever. 
On the other hand, facts show that any considerable 
quantity of fermented wine did and would produce ine- 
briation ; and also that a tendency towards it, or a distur- 



THE WINES OF THE ANCIENTS. 123 

bance of the fine tissues of the physical system, was and 
would be produced by even a small quantity of it ; full 
surely if this was often drunk. 

" What, then, is the difficulty in taking the position 
that the good and innocent wine is meant in all cases 
where it is commended and allowed; or that the alco- 
holic or intoxicating wine is meant in all cases of prohi- 
bition and denunciation ? 

" I cannot refuse to take this position without virtually 
impeaching the Scriptures of contradiction or inconsis- 
tency. I cannot admit that God has given liberty to 
persons in health to drink alcoholic wine, without admit- 
ting that his Word and his works are at variance. The 
law against such drinking, which he has en stamped on 
our nature, stands out prominently — read and assented 
to by all sober and thinking men — is his Word now at 
variance with this % Without reserve, I am prepared to 
answer in the negative." 

It was after an exhaustive examination, the details of 
which are contained in his printed letter of sixty-four 
pages octavo, that he gave to the world -this full and une- 
quivocal testimony we have just recited. 

Rev. Albert Barnes, in his commentary on John ii. 
10, says : " The wine of Judea was the pure juice of the 
grape, without any mixture of alcohol, and commonly 
weak and harmless. It was the common drink of the 
people, and did not tend to produce intoxication." 

All acquainted with Mr. Barnes know that he would 
not make such a statement until he had given the subject 
a patient and thorough examination. Having scrutinized 
all the authorities, he has thus recorded upon the printed 
page his clear and honest convictions. 

Beside these testimonies, a goodly number of men, well 



124 THE LAWS OF FERMENTATION. 

read in ancient lore and learned in the original languages 
of the Word of God, have, by patient study, been led to 
the same conclusion. The company of such is rapidly 
increasing both in Great Britain and America. We do 
not despair, but confidently believe that the time is not 
far distant when no drinker, nor vender, nor defender of 
alcoholic wines, will find a shelter and a house of refuge 
in the Scriptures of God. Let there be Light ! 



INDEX 



Acetous, 16, 18, 25. 

Adams's Antiquities, 29, 38, 39. 

iEneus, 41. 

./Egosthenian, 44. 

Aged men, 117. 

Ahsis, 59. 

Aigleuces, 37. 

Aintab, 32. 

Albanian, 41. 

Alcohol, 15, 17, 88, 114 note. 

Aleppo, 30. 

Allar, 66. 

Alsop, Robt., 30. 

Alvord, 86. 

Amethyston wine, 42. 

Amphora, 37, 43, 77. 

Anthon's Diet., 15, 30, 34, 35, 38, 46, 47, 

90. 
Antiquities, Adams's, 29, 38, 39. 

Smith's, 29, 34, 37, 45, 46, 76, 
90, 110. 
Aquinas, Thomas, 83. 
Arabia, 61. 
Aristotle, 27, 42, 45. 
Arcadia wine, 27. 
Ashishah, 60. 
Asia Minor, 18, 32. 
Athenseus, 43, 49, 109. 
Attic honey, 49. 
August, 21. 
Augustine, 87. 
Authorized Version, 53. 

Bacchus, figure of, 73. 
Bacchus, 12, 29, 73. 

Anti-, 12, 16, 18, 25, 37, 41. 
Baptist, John, 77. 
Bad wine, 63. 
Barnes, Albert, 63, 90, 123. 
Barry. E., 40, 50. 
Beale, Dr., 112. 
Beaumont, Dr., 113. 
Blessings, 67, 68, 70. 
Bible and Science, 13, 52. 

" Commentary, 9. 
Bibline sweet, 43. 
Bishops, 106. 

Bloomfield, S. T., 90, 100, 101. 
Blood, emblem, 71. 

" of vine, 83. 
Boerhave. H., 26. 
Boiled wine, 24, 26, 32, 59. 
Bottles, 64, 75. 
Bowring, Dr., 29. 



Brown, W. G., 28. 
Bush, Prof., 121. 
Calmet, A., 25. 
Calabrians, 35. 
Cana wedding, 85. 
Candia, 30. 
Carenum, 29. 
Carr, T. S., 38, 40. 
Castratum, 33. 
Cato, 48. 
Chaldee, 61. 

Chambers's Cyclopaedia, 14, 76. 
Chaptal, Count, 17. 88. 
Chemical science, 22, 26, 36, 39, 51. 
Chrysostom, 87. 
Cider, 41. 
Clark, Adam, 74. 
" D. E.. 21. 
Classification of texts, 12, 62. 
Clement, 83. 
Climate, 18, 19. 

Columella, 27, 37, 38, 42, 48,76. 
Concessions, 11. 
Contrast of texts, 71, 72. 
Cook, Capt., 19. 
Corlaer's Hook, 10. 
Corn, 67, 69. 
Covetous, 99. 
Creature of God, 112. 
Crete, 30. 

Damascus, 32. 

Dandalo, Count, 40. 

Dandini, 21. 

Dates, 55. 

Davy, Sir Humphry, 88, 114. 

Deacons, 111. 

Decomposition, 18. 

Defrutum, 27, 30, 59. 

Delavan, E. C, 23, 121. 

Delphin Notes, 35, 43, 109. 

Democritus, 27. 

Depurating, 38. 

Dibb s,30,31. 

Diehl, 19. 

Distillation, 33, 55. 

Donavan, 16. 24, 27, 33. 

Donnegan, 89, 93, 101, 106, 107, 110, 116. 

Drinks, 105. 

Drinking, Christ, 77. 

Drugs, 47. 

Drunkards, 99, 108. 

Drunken, 92, 100, 106. 

Duff, Dr. H, 24. 



126 



INDEX. 



Eating, Christ, 77. 
Edmunds, Dr., 112. 
Effeminatum, 33. 
Elsworth, Hon. O., 44. 
Encyclopaedia, London, 40. 
Engedi, 20, 22. 
English, generic words, 60. 
Epsutna, 29. 
Eshcol, 20, 22. 
Excess, 118. 
Expediency, 95. 
Experiments, 114 note. 
Exploration, 10. 
Eunuchrum, 33. 

Fabroni, 17, 19. 
Fermentation, 15, 30. 

" prevented, 24. 

First-fruits, 66. 

•• sermon, 10. 
Filtration, 24, 33-36. 
Florence, 23. 
Fruit cake, 60. 

" preserved, 23. 

" sweet, 18. 

" of vine, 82. 
Fumigation, 39, 43. 

Gall, 64. 

Gardiner, 39. 

Generic words, 54, 60. 

Gesenius, 80. 

Gill, Dr.. 64. 

Gleukos. 14, 15. 44. 46, 74, 89, 90, 91, 117. 

Glukus. 42, 43, 89, 117. 

Gleuxis, 29. 

Gluten, 16, 17, 24, 33, 34, 36, 37, 57. 

Good wine, 66. 

Grapes, 18. 

juice, 24, 26. 27, 31-34, 46, 51, 54, 
59, 73, 74. 83. 
" molasses, 31. 
Gray, 75. 
Greek words, 60. 
Green, T. S., 90, 101. 

Hall, Joseph, 87. 

Harmer, 39. 

Hebrew words, other, 59. 

Helbon, 30. 

Helen, 47. 

Henderson, 44. 

Henry, Matthew, 45. 

Hepsima. 59. 

Herod. 23. 

Hesiod, 49. 

H'ppocrates. 43, 49. 

History, 9. 

Holmes, Rev. Henry, 31. 

Homer, 42, 43, 47. 49. 

Honey, Attic. 49. 

Horace, 28. 35. 42. 100, 109. 

Horn, Hartvvell, 21. 

Hot climate, 19. 

Inspired original text, 8, 54. 

Inspissated, 26. 

Intoxicating wine, 31, 32, 35, 61. 



Introduction, 7. 
Italy, 35, 49. 

Jacobus, Dr., 32, 89. 
Jahn. Dr., 20. 
Jericho, 21. 
John Baptist, 77. 
Johnson's Dictionary, 15. 
Josephus, 23, 74, 90. 
Judging, 105. 
Juice, 73, 74. 
June, 21. 

Kesroan, 30. 

Khamah, G4. 

Khahmatz, 80. 

Khemer, 58. 

Kitto, 18, 19, 29, 90, 55, 56, 57, 90. 

Koht, J. G., 48. 

Lacedaemonians, 27. 

Lancet, analysis of wine, 116. 

Latin words, 60. 

Laurie, Dr. ,'46, 61, 82. 

Leaven, 80. 81. 

Lebanon, 21. 29, 30. 

Lees, Dr.. 9, 36, 51, 54, 56, 58, 59, 61, 72, 118. 

Leiber, 30. 

Lewis, Taylor, 9, 54. 

Lightfoot, 51. 

Liebig, 17, 25, 2«, 59, 76, 81, 8b, 115. 

Littleton's Dictionary, 14. 

Lixivium, 37. 

Lord's Supper, 79. 

Lowth, Bishop, 74. 

Mandelslo, 18. 

Mamlaqqim, 60. 

Mariti, 21. 

Masada, 23. 

Meats, 105. 

Medical enquiries, 45. 

Meronian, 49. 

Mesek, 59. 

Mill, J. S., 62. 

Milton, 75. 

Miracle, 86. 

Mixed wine, 50. 

Mocking, 89: 

Moderation, 105. 

Monroe, Henry. 88. 

Morrison, Dr., 114. 

Mullen, Dr., 19. 

Murphy, Dr., 55. 

Must, 27, 37, 38, 39, 41, 46, 91. 

Mytelene, 45. 

Natural taste, 22. 
Nau, 21. 
Nazarite, 77, 78. 
Neitchutz, 21. 
Nenman, C, 29. 
Nevin. J. W., 22. 
New bottles, 75. 

" wine, 75 89. 
Newcome, Archbishop, 64, 101. 
Nicander, 41. 
Nicocbaus. 49. 
Niebuhr, 82. 







INDEX. 




Nitrogen, 81. 




Scriptures: 




Nordheimer, Prof., 64. 




Exodus xii. 42, 


60 


Nott'a Lectures, 8, 54, 72, 74 


,122. 


xxxiv. 25, 


81 






Levit. ii. 11, 


67 


October, 21. 




x. 9, 


60 


Offerings, 66. 




Numb. vi. 3, 


60 


Oil, 66. 




xiii. 24, 


20 


Oinos, 14, 41, 43, 61, 74, 81. 




xviii. 12, 


66 


Old bottles, 75. 




xxviii. 7, 


60 


" wine, 27. 




Deut. vii. 13, 


67 


Oleum gleucinum, 38. 




viii. 7, 


20 


Olshausen, 104. 




xi. 14, 


68 


Olympic games, 100. 




xiv. 26, 


60 


Opimian wine, 27. 




xxix. 6, 


60 


Originality, 7. 




xxxii. 14, 


20,59 


Original text inspired, 8, 54. 




xxxii. 24, 


64 


Owen, D. J., 78. 




Judges ix. 13, 


69,70 


Palladius, 27. 




xiii. 4, 7, 14, 


60 


Palestine, 19, 20, 22, 23. 




1 Sam. i. 15, 


60 


Palm, 18, 56. 




2 Sam. vi. 10, 


60 


Passover, 51, 79. 




2 Kings xviii. 32, 


20 


Passum, 44. 




1 Chron. xvi. 3, 


60 


Parker, Dr. W., 113. 




Ezra vi. 9, 


59 


Parkhurst, 64. 




vii. 22, 


59 


Parkinson, 26. 




Nehem. viii. 10. 


60 


Peabody, A. P., 80. 




x. 37, 


66 


Pereira, Dr., 17. 




x. 39, 


57,67 


Pharaoh, 72. 




xiii. 5, 12, 


57 


Pippini, Senior, 23. 




Job vi. 4, 


64 


Plato, 45. 




Psalms iv. 7, 


69 


Plautus. 41. 




lviii. 4, 


64 


Pliny, 23, 34, 35, 36, 41, 48, 59, 


108, 109, 


110. Ix. 3. 


65 


Plutarch, 34, 45, 74. 




lxix. 12, 


60 


Poison, 63, 64. 




lxxv.8, 48,50,59,60,65 


Polybius, 44, 117. 




cii. 9, 


60 


Portland, Duke of, 21. 




civ. 14 69 


70,86 


Potter, Archbishop, 27. 




cxl. 3, 


64 


Pramnian wine, 49. 




Prov. iii. 10, 


57,68 


Preserving fruits, 23. 




iv. 17, 


63 


" wine, 25. 




ix. 2-5, 50 


60,70 


Prohibitory Roman law, 45. 




XX. 1, 


60 


Protopos, 44, 45, 109, 110. 




xxiii. 29-31, 


59, 63 






xxv. 25, 


70 


Question, the, 13. 




Cant. ii. 5, 


60 






v. 1, 


70 


Reading Cyrus, 30, 40. 




vii. 9, 


70 


Receipts for wine, 37, 38, 39, 


47. 


Isaiah i. 22, 


59 


Rees' Cyclopaedia, 14. 




v. 2, 


74 


Retimo, 30. 




v. 11, 


60 


Robinson, E., 84, 89, 100, 106 


,112. 


v. 22, 47 


60,65 


Robson, Smylie, 32. 




xxiv. 7, 


57 


Rockingham, Marquis, 21. 




xxiv. 9, 


60 


Roman prohibitory law, 45. 




xxvii. 2, 


20,59 


wines, 27, 39, 41, 46. 




xxviii. 7, 


60 


" women, 44. 




xxix. 9, 


60 


Rule, W. H.,46, 138. 




li. 17, 


65 


Russell, Dr. A., 30. 




lv. 1. 


70 






lvi. 12, 


60, 63 


Sabe, 59. 




lxii. 8, 


57, 68 


Salt, 81. 




lxv. 8, 


57,68 


Sapa. a7, 30, 59. 




Jeremiah xxv. 15, 


48,65 


Science, 13. 22, 26, 36, 90. 




xlviii. 11, 


60 


Scriptures, 53. 




Dan. v. 1-4, 


59 


Gen. xxvii. 28, 37, 


67 


Hosea iii. 1, 


60 


xxix. 11, 


20 


iv. 14, 


57 


xl. 11, 


74 


iv. 18, 


59 


xlix. 11, 
Exodus xii. 8, 39, 


19 


vii. 5, 


64 


80 


ix. 2, 


57 



127 



128 



INDEX. 



Scriptures : 




Joel i. 5, 


59 


i. 10, 


57 


iii. 18, 


59,68 


Amos ix. 13, 


59 


Micah ii. 11, 


60 


vi. 15, 


57 


Nah. i. 14, 


59 


Hab. ii. 5, 


63 


ii. 15, 


64 


Hag. i. 11, 


57 


Zech. ix. 17, 


57 


Matt. ix. 17, 


75 


xi. 18, 19, 


77 


xv. 34, 


86 


xxi. 33, 


79 


xxiv. 38, 


79 


xxvi. 26, 


71,79 


Mark ii. 22, 


75,83 


vi. 38, 


86 


xii. 1, 


83 


xiv. 22-25, 


71,83 


xv. 23, 


83 


Luke i. 15, 


82 


v. 37, 


75,84 


vii. 33, 


84 


x. 34, 


84 


xii. 19, 45, 


84 


xvii. 27, 28, 


84 


xx. 9, 


84 


xxi. 34, 


84 


John ii. 1-11, 


85,89 


Acts ii. 13, 


89,90 


xxiv. 25, 


91 


Rom. xiii. 13, 


92, 103 


xiv. 13, 


92 


xiv. 14-21. 


95 


1 Cor. vi. 10, 12, 


100 


viii. 9, 


93 


viii. 4-13, 


100 


ix. 25, 


100 


x. 16, 


71 


x. 22-30, 


96, IOC 


x. 33, 


96 


xi. 20-34, 


100 


Gal. v. 19-24, 


103 


Eph. v. 18, 


103, 104 


Phil. iv. 5, 


105 


Col. ii. 36, 


105 


1 Thess. v. 7, 


106 


1 Tim. iii. 2, 3, 10, 


106, 107 


iii. 8, 


111 


iii. 11, 


112 


iv. 4, 


112 


v. 23, 


108, 116 


Titus i. 6, 


104 


ii. 2, 3, 


117 


1 Pet. i. 13, 


118 


iv.l, 5,7,104,118,119 


v. 7, 8, 


119 


2 Pet. i. 6, 


119 


Rev. vi. 6, 


119 


xiv. 8, 10, 19, 


120 


xvi. 19, 


120 


xvii. 2, 


120 


xviii. 3, 


120 


xviii. 13, 


119 


xix. 15, 


120 



Seixas, Prof., 12. 

Seor, 80. 

Sermon, first, 10. 

Shakar, 55, 56, 60. 

Shanks, G. H., 58. 

Shaw, Dr., 19. 

Shemarim, 60. 

Sick, wine for, 34, 109. 

Smart, Prof., 42, 43. 

Smith's Antiquities, 29, 34, 37, 45, 46, 76, 

90, 110. 
Smith, Dr. Eli, 30, 32. 

" Wm, Diet., 15, 86, 91. 
Social usages, 9. 
Sober, 107, 112, 118, 119. 
Sorek, 20, 22. 
Soveh, 59. 
Spain, 23, 41, 44, 49. 
Stuart, Prof., 13, 43, 51, 54, 55, 56, 57, 72, 

80, 84, 122. 
Stum, 40. 
Stumbling, 92. 
Subsidence, 24, 36. 
Succus, 34. 

Sulphur, 24, 39, 40, 41. 
Supper, Lord's, 79. 
Sweet fruits, 18. 

" natural taste, 22. 
Swift, Judge, 44. 
Swineburn, 23. 
Syria, wine of, 28, 32, 49. 
Syrseneum, 59. 
Syrup, 16, 25. 

Taste, sweet, natural, 22. 
Telemachns, 47. 
Temple, S. G., 19. 
Temperance, 91, 103, 119. 
Temperate, 100, 103. 
Temperature. Palestine, 19, 21, 22. 
Testimony, 12, 121, 122, 123. 
Thermopolium, 49, 50. 
Thayer, 40, 80. 
Theophrastus, 49. 
Texts, classified, 12, 62. 
Thracian wine, 49. 
Tirosh, 57, 58, 68. 
Translations of Bible, 53. 
Trapp, Dr., 28. 
Treat, Capt.,35, 49. 
Trench, Dr., 87. 
Turner, 17, 81, 114. 

TTnferniented wine, 40, 49, 51, 56, 79, 98, 

Unintoxicating, 35, 42, 109. 

Usages, social, 9. 

Ure, Dr., 14, 24, 33, 36, 39. 

Varro, 48. 
Venetians, 30. 
Vigilant, 107. 
Vim, vi, vires, 33. 
Vinous, 16, 17, 18, 25. 
Vinuni, 61. 
Volney, 28. 
Virgil, 28, 44. 

Walker's Diet., 15. 



INDEX. 129 



Warm climate, 18. Wines, preserved, 25. 

Warren, Capt., 22. Wives, 112. 

Water, 48. Women, Roman, 44, 45. 

Webster, Noah, Diet., 14. Worcester, 15. 

Wedding, Oana, 85. Words, generic 54. 

Welbeck, 21. " Hebrew, 58. 

Westein, 117. " Greek, 60. 

Whiston, Wm., 23. " Latin, 60. 

Whitby, Dr., 100. " English, 60. 

Wilson, Capt., 22. 

Wine, 14, 26, 42, 48, 61. Tahn, Dr., 20. 

" bad. 63. Yayin, 54, 55, 58, 61, 64. 

" good, 66. Yeast, 16, 24. 

" new, 75. 

" mixed, 50. Zouk, 29. 



■ I 









